As the eldest child of the Fourth Kazekage and an Alpha, Sabaku no Temari was unused to being challenged. Though, there was a period of time when even the newly-emerged Alpha inside of her murmured that it would be unwise to press her status upon her youngest brother, powerful as he was even when he stood a whole head shorter and two years younger than her when he was a boy of twelve. The fact that both the Suna council and her recently deceased father had hoped for Gaara to present as an Alpha did not help, as she struggled to reconcile with the idea that her pack would come to consist of two Alphas, both vying for the right to dominate and lead.
When Gaara's scent remained unchanged as he turned thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and then sixteen, the Alpha in her heaved a sigh of relief before firmly taking reins in leading their pack; Temari used to ask for permission to scent her brothers and their teacher in the past, but once she realised that her position would be unchallenged, she became more comfortable in displaying her Alpha tendencies. Gaara had leaned comically backwards the first time she went straight for his jawline to scent him, and the look of astonishment in his eye was something she committed to memory as the first time she managed to surprise him. When he realised what his sister was attempting, he nodded and quietly acknowledged, "Alpha", before tilting his head to let her resume.
Which was all a moot point now, she realised as she sat with Kankurou in their manor's observatory. She lifted her gaze towards one of the large windows, and saw that her brother was staring at a point beyond it as well; both of them eyeing far beyond the borders of the village from their high vantage point, clutching tea cups whose contents have long gone cold.
Watching and waiting.
When she had announced to Gaara the reason for his plight several hours ago - an Alpha rut - his nose had wrinkled in confusion, and he snarled animalistically in response, denying what she claimed, "I am a Beta. I cannot… I am not having a rut." The sand around him was starting to swirl and dance around them both, tiny shrapnels striking her skin as she stood her ground. Blood was flowing freely down her fingertips and smearing into his sleeve, and Gaara whipped his head towards the growing stain to growl in agitation.
"You met a compatible Omega," Temari's words caused him to glare sharply at her, and he bared his teeth as if daring her to continue talking. Such an act would have silenced a lesser packmate, but Temari was his Alpha, and she continued, "And you are displaying every sign of an Alpha trying to protect her from me, another Alpha. She triggered your rut, Gaara."
He opened his mouth once, paused, then closed it quietly. The sand around them was starting to take the form of large tendrils, pointed at the tips. They reminded Temari of Shukaku's massive paws.
She clapped her other hand to Gaara's shoulder, and said in a firm voice, "You have two choices - go to your Omega, or run as far as you can in the opposite direction."
The sand loomed over them both in surging waves, hovering in wait for Gaara's command. He shook his head, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut as if attempting to clear his mind. The boiling, churning heat in his chest and groin was making it hard for him to focus, and blood dribbled out a corner of his mouth from when he had accidentally bit down on his tongue. When he flexed his hands, they both looked down to see that his nails had sharpened into the pointed tips similar to Shukaku's claws. Temari inhaled deeply at the sight of it, and she trembled at the memories of a time long ago when the Ichibi still held sway over her brother.
"Those are my only choices?" His voice was pitched low, his baritone deeper than usual when he finally realised the truth in his sister's words - that he was indeed an Alpha experiencing his first rut. And if what he had read about male Alpha ruts was true, he was going to be a purely destructive force, driven mainly by the desires to breed and dominate. Neither of those seemed like good ideas to him right now, or at any point in the future, for that matter; he was the Fifth Kazekage, beholden to his village, and his duty was to place his own wants far, far below the needs of his people.
"You can fuck her, or you can fuck up the village," Temari did not intended to sound so stern, but her voice came out that way, anyway, "It is entirely up to you."
What she did not expect was for Gaara to bodily shove her backwards, his arms held menacingly at his side as he all but stalked her towards the wall of his office. Temari began backing up at the first push of his torso against her hands, and she shrunk into herself as he cornered her. His breath came out heated against her forehead as a growl rumbled in his chest, and when she finally looked up at him, it was to freeze under the severity of his jade-green eyes.
"You," he declared, lip curling to show his teeth, "Are in charge of the village until I return."
"Yes," she swallowed, and at the snort of derision he threw at her, she quickly added, "Alpha."
When she finally opened her eyes, startled that she had even closed them, the Kazekage's office was empty. One of the windows was thrown wide open, and the fading sound of rushing sand told her that Gaara was headed for the high village walls. He's not looking to mate, Temari realised, otherwise he would be staying within the village to hunt her down.
She straightened her slightly shaky limbs and glanced down at her palm. Moments later, she was tearing down the hallway, a trail of blood dotting the floor as she barked at Gaara's secretary to summon the Suna council for an emergency meeting at once. The agitated Alpha pheromones she was releasing in response to Gaara's stronger ones continued to waft in the air as she marched towards the hospital's triage section, and civilians and shinobi alike quickly stepped out of her way. The night shift nurse directed her to an unoccupied room with a trembling finger, and a medic-nin was immediately summoned.
"We must leave the cut visible, Temari-sama, so that we can monitor it for signs of infection," her attending medic-nin had told her when she complained about the obvious marring of her skin, a puckered line of pink that looked crudely mended together by hand rather than the healing jutsu the medic-nin had used on her. Kankurou, who had arrived several minutes before, baulked and blurted out, "You didn't disinfect the wound?!"
At Temari's narrowed eyes, the medic-nin made a noise that sounded like a squawk, and quickly explained, "O-of course we did that, Kankurou-sama! It's just that she was injured by Kazekage-sama's sand, and I don't know how to extract his chakra from the cut, so… I did heal it, but without complete removal of his chakra from her wound, I dare not seal it off completely."
"Out," Temari barked at the medic-nin, who fled the brightly-lit room at once. Chiyo, who was watching from just outside the room, had been silent throughout the healing session, but a series of soft chuckles soon came from her direction. Although she still held the position as the head of the medic corps, she preferred to spend her days in the greenhouses and her private office, mixing up poisonous concoctions and salves. It was rare to see her in the hospital on most days, and she remained an elusive figure to catch whenever she did turn up. The fact that she was half-hidden in the shadows riled Temari up more than she expected, and she directed her anger towards the revered elder. "And what do you find so funny, Chiyo-sama?"
The old woman stepped into the room, and Temari's lips thinned at seeing the frailty in her footsteps; it was easy to forget that Chiyo had fought alongside the Konoha-nin and aided in the rescue of their Kazekage, not because her contributions were insignificant, but because the matron was easily outshone by the spunk and spirit of the much younger shinobi. Temari had been left behind to protect the village while Kankurou took a team out to assist in the efforts, so she was unaware of what Chiyo had offered to do for her youngest brother, and even less of how she had spent the past day recuperating from her battle wounds. "Let me see your hand," Chiyo held her own out as she approached the blonde kunoichi.
Having no reason to refuse their head medic, Temari did so. Chiyo brought the younger woman's injured palm close to her face, tilting it this way and that, and finally asked, "Gaara did this?"
"That's the Kazekage to you," Temari reminded, "And does it matter who injured me? Finish healing me, or let me go. The council should be waiting by now."
"The council?"
"Gaara has left me in charge while he is undergoing his rut."
The healing chakra that Chiyo had been gathering in her hand flickered and died away the moment she took in Temari's words, and her utterly blank facial expression sat ill with Temari once she noticed it. Beside them, Kankurou waved his arms to draw their attention, "Wait, wait, WAIT - what do you mean, Gaara is having a rut?"
"Gaara is an Alpha," Temari explained while still glaring at Chiyo, "But you knew that already, didn't you, Chiyo-sama?"
The old woman shrugged casually, and that only caused Temari's pheromone levels to spike further. "I had my suspicions," Chiyo said, "When he finally put his mind to it, the Kazekage managed to tame Shukaku. A Bijuu as proud as Shukaku would not bow to a Beta, but I only knew for sure when you told me that his scent changed after Shukaku was extracted from him."
"So, let me see if I understand this. Gaara had always been an Alpha, but somehow, Shukaku was suppressing his designation?" Kankurou asked as he leaned heavily against the back of Temari's chair; his nonchalant demeanour being displayed so blatantly around his pack Alpha rankled her nerves, but Temari had a bigger fish to fry.
"We still don't know much about Bijuu's. After all, haven't we called Shukaku a sand spirit until he was first sealed into Bunpuku?" Chiyo wagged a finger mischievously, "Who knows? Maybe the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is an Alpha as well!"
That would bring a whole new set of problems to deal with, if Uzumaki Naruto turned out to be an Alpha as well. Alpha friendships were common enough, though they maintained a healthy appetite for rivalry due to their designation. However, if Naruto and Gaara were to both come into conflict, especially over the same girl…
Kankurou found himself chewing on his metaphorical nails abruptly; he realised something very important - Naruto had been trying to date Sakura, and meanwhile Gaara presented her with a part of the Kazekage's formal attire as a parting gift (a present of great magnitude - definitely not something you hand over to some run-of-the-mill kunoichi).
Oh, freaking Reto, Shamon, Tekura and Father. We're all gonna die.
"We are all going to die!"
That was the exact chorus that awaited them when the trio arrived at the conference room, with Temari mincing no words as she explained the reason for the late summon, and the manner in which several councilmen looked all but ready to dive headfirst out of the nearest window had her quietly signalling to the ANBU stationed around the room to be on the lookout for such madness.
"Oh, go hide in your secret bunker, you stupid lot!" Chiyo laughed out loud at the fearful expressions on almost every councilman's face, her dismissive attitude causing them to panic even more thunderously. Ebizo was sitting in stunned silence in his usual place next to the Kazekage's ornate, high-backed chair which Temari was now occupying. The blonde kunoichi blinked in confusion at Chiyo's outburst, but was placated by Kankurou miming to her that he'd explain what that was about later.
"Kami, when we prayed for an Alpha Kazekage, who would have thought it would be answered in this manner," hissed Tojuro, and he glared accusingly at Temari as if to lay all blame at her feet even as his sour scent betrayed his terror.
Baki laid a hand firmly on the back of Temari's seat, and with Kankurou standing on the opposite side, the presence of her packmates was a reminder that she needed to convey a sense of calm. She was the only other Alpha in this room, and she needed to override Tojuro's hysteria so as to regain control over the council and have them pay attention to what she had to say. Inhaling deeply (and ignoring the stench of sun-ripen leather), she allowed her menthol and turmeric scent to permeate the entirety of the room, overlaid with the pungent smell of ozone which signalled her agitation. Tojuro took an instinctive step backwards before falling back into his seat, and he dipped his head in acknowledgement of her status even as his lips trembled with an urge to show his teeth.
"Temari-sama, where did the Kazekage go?" Councilwoman Hakami ventured.
"He left the village half an hour ago. He chose not to seek out a partner for his rut, so I am assuming he has gone into the desert to keep us safe."
"Then… has anyone thought to send an Omega out to him? To quell his appetite for destruction?"
Temari had been watching Chiyo out of the corner of her eye, and did not catch which councilman was the one who made the suggestion. She did, however, catch the slight widening of Baki's visible eye at the idea, and it was her teacher who calmly said, "It would be unwise to send an unchosen Omega to an Alpha undergoing his first rut. Temari-sama as an Alpha knows what a rut is like, and since she is the Kazekage Proxy, I think we should let her decide our next course of action."
When Temari's first rut occurred when she was fourteen - not too old for a first rut, but still considered late - Rasa all but dragged her out of the village with him the moment he learnt of her designation. The last thing he needed was for the Kazekage's eldest child to accidentally mate an Omega while under the delirium of her overactive hormones. The only advice he had before leaving her at one of their abandoned guard outposts that was half a day's travel from Suna was, "Seal yourself in here, and don't come out until your rut is over. Destroy this tower if you must, but do not come back until you are under control."
Harsh words from a harsher man raised in the harshest country.
It was fortunate that Baki had provided her with a bag of provisions before they left the village, because between her urge to mate an Omega and the desire to obey her father - their pack Alpha - she was an absolute mess of wants and nerves, and by the end of her rut, was so severely dehydrated that had Kankurou not sent one of his puppets out to check on her, she would have died. Would Rasa have minded terribly to lose the child that was not the one he desired to be an Alpha, she was not certain.
"We will send some necessities out to Gaara. Kamatari can track him down by his chakra signature," ordered Temari, pushing aside the old memories of her first rut, "If he can withstand Shukaku for so many years, he can withstand a few days of rut."
"Are we certain that he is really holing up somewhere to wait out his rut, and not on a breeding rampage?" Tojuro's upper lip curled into a sneer, betraying how little he thought of Gaara's self-control. Almost everyone in the village had lost either a family member or a friend to Shukaku's rampages whenever Gaara lost control as a child, and Tojuro had been one of the council members to veto sending out a search party for the Kazekage when Akatsuki had taken him.
Ironically, he was also one of the councilmen most persistent about sending prospective Omega mates to tempt Gaara with over the years, and it was clear from the way his eyes were lighting up that he was considering doing that once more - having the Kazekage mate one of his clan Omegas would ensure his seat of power on the council for many years to come.
"I am positive," Temari bit out - no, I am not - "Gaara chose to leave the village. Where else in the desert is he going to find an Omega? No, he is placing the village above himself, and we just need to give him the time and space he needs to finish his rut."
Tojuro looked ready to argue further, but was interrupted by Chiyo clapping her hands together high above her head. With a smile plastered on her face, she said, "Well, now that the Kazekage's matter is settled, why don't you all go hide in the bunker and wait things out? We'll let you know once he has returned."
"What is all this talk about a bunker?" Temari turned to Kankurou in frustration.
Stifling an amused snort, her brother leaned forward to whisper into her ear, "The council was worried that when Gaara presented as an Alpha, he would destroy the village the same way Shukaku would. So they secretly constructed a bunker for themselves to hide in when the day came."
"We have the budget for that?"
"Well, the Puppet Brigade had."
Baki cleared his throat quietly, drawing Temari's attention back to the matter at hand. Grimacing at her renewed distaste for certain members of their council, she rose from her seat and barked out a crisp "dismissed." Most of the council members filed behind Tojuro, who left the room with his head held high even as he led them to their underground safehouse to vanish for the next few days. Ebizo went to stand next to his sister and muttered softly, "Well, this has been a most interesting week."
"The Kazekage turning out to be an Alpha? It's unexpected for his age, but he'll be fine," Chiyo's smile dropped, and she glanced towards Temari, "I wonder, though… What, or more specifically, who triggered his rut? This is not a puberty-induced rut, that much I am certain of."
Kankurou emitting an involuntary "meep" instantly drew Temari's attention, and she leaned into his personal space, scent sharpening as she glared and asked in an unmistakably sinister voice, "What do you know?"
"I don't know for certain, but Gaara took Sakura into his office this morning. I don't know what they were doing in there, I swear!" Kankurou raised his hands up in front of himself in a placating manner, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, "Though, when Gaara gave her his scarf, I saw that the Copy Nin was really upset about it."
The blonde kunoichi inhaled sharply at Kankurou's words sank in. She knew from his scent that Kakashi was an Alpha, and having heard the tales of his accomplishments, always made sure that her scent remained subdued when around him - to avoid being taken as a challenger to his dominant status. Alphas ranked themselves in a hierarchy that was established through one's strength and abilities, and she knew without needing to fight him that he outranked her. That he always lingered so close to Sakura indicated that he had bonds with her beyond that of a teacher to a student - perhaps he was a packmate as some genin teams tended to form amongst themselves. The fact was that Gaara outright offered Kakashi's packmate an article of his clothing - only pack Alphas' and blood relatives' scents had a calming effect on an Omega - and it was considered an offer of courtship, but only if…
"Sakura is an Omega," Temari murmured, soft enough to only be heard by Baki and Kankurou. "She must be the Omega that I scented in his office. She triggered his rut only because he is attracted to her."
"Sakura is an Omega?" Kankurou took a step back in surprise, eyes widening. "Do you think Gaara knew what he did when he gave her his scarf?"
That he was offering to take over as her Alpha? Temari winced at the thought, Surely he didn't understand the implications of such a gesture. Gaara had enough on his plate overseeing an entire village, and learnt only as much about Alpha-Omega relations as was necessary for his work. The courtship practices of an Alpha could not have been part of his education, since he had no use for it.
"We can't send for her to soothe Kazekage-sama's rut. She's not his subject," Baki noted, and upon noticing the severity of Temari's teal eyes, quickly added, "Not that I'm suggesting we offer her up as a rut partner. But she is a Konoha-nin, and if she is the responsible Omega… Then Kazekage-sama will have to endure his ruts alone, until his Alpha finds another suitable Omega."
"If he hasn't already gone chasing after her," Temari scowled, and she prayed that her youngest brother would not end up breaking their alliance with Konoha in a moment of weakness.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
But for the sound of his own laboured breaths that Gaara partook whilst hidden away in his Ultimate Defence - a hardened sphere made out of his chakra-infused sand - there was no other sound to distract him from the abnormally loud thumping of his heart. Every beat echoed in his chest like a hollowed-out gourd, and the redheaded shinobi was almost convinced that he could feel his blood flowing in the tiniest of his veins; racing through his entire body like quicksilver and making him hyper-aware of his tingling flesh.
When he tore past the village walls (startling the night guards so badly that he had to catch one with his sand when the man fell over the side), the ache in his chest seemed to sharpen as he turned his eyes in the direction of the Land of Fire. It was the direction that the Konoha-nin had left in hours ago, and more specifically, a certain pink-haired kunoichi had hurried away towards. She had left under the care of her genin teacher, whom Gaara's nose finally enlightened to him as an Alpha only after the two of them had left the Kazekage building.
He took your Omega, the beast inside of him glowered, Go after them. Prove that you are more worthy of her favour. She is strong and ready to bear your children.
Gaara allowed himself a snarl of frustration even as he lifted his head in her direction, trying to scent her sweetness even when he knew it was a futile act - the winds would have carried her pheromones away long ago, and the only thing he could smell in the air was his own delusion. He tore through the desert on a sand platform, and it was only when he could no longer feel the pull of the Omega kunoichi that he allowed himself to drop to the ground. The sand rose around him automatically, sealing him off in a small bubble of privacy so that he could shed his Sand Armour alongside his robe to wipe off the sweat that had been pooling underneath.
As the Kazekage, he learnt about the behaviour of those belonging to either the Alpha or Omega designation. The Alpha was expected to lead and protect, sometimes to the point of being outright pushy and domineering; Temari always seemed a little quicker to anger whenever she was nearing her rut, and the fact that her physical strength increased with the onset of her rut meant that she was a force to be reckoned with (more so than normal) twice a year. The Omega was expected to be docile and accommodating, to quench the simmering rage of the Alpha around them. As long as their paths did not cross during a heat or a rut, they balanced each other out and in turn helped a village to function better.
The problem here was the fact that Gaara had no idea what a rut truly entailed.
There were the crude jokes about knotting, about filling a willing Omega's womb up with cum, pinning them down with their legs thrown over the Alpha's shoulders to successfully put a child inside of one. Sniggers about how an Omega in heat would arch their back and shamelessly present themselves to any nearby male to gain their attention, to ride their cock ceaselessly to sate their own lust. Stories about Omegas who were so skilled in wielding their pheromones that they made slaves of men, Alpha and Beta alike. All these gossip, Gaara had heard while convening with Jiraiya at the brothels of Suna; no one bothered to hold their tongue when both powerful shinobi wore genjutsu to appear as two unremarkable villagers enjoying the company of beautiful women and fine wine as they traded information about the shinobi world, and Gaara had scoffed at the Toad Sage's advice to sample an Omega in heat, just to get a taste of what being stripped of self-control felt like (the better to counter it when the time came, was his oh-so-wise reasoning).
Right now, Gaara was convinced that no amount of fucking an Omega (or several) in anytime past would have prepared him for this level of desire.
Why her? He asked himself. Why now?
When he rose to the title of Kazekage, women flocked to him willingly; a far cry from when he was nothing more than a living weapon engineered for Suna's militaristic ambitions. Most of them he had brushed off, his heart hardened irrevocably once he realised that almost all of these admirers were the very same ones that had shunned him when he was still a dark, violent child. They were lured to him by his position of power, though Kankurou groused secretly that it was because Gaara filled out his lanky teenage form in more recent years. There had been one or two women that had caught his eye in the past, and in rare moments of weakness he had indulged them with heated touches and hungry kisses, but none of them had sparked such a fierce desire in him - to gather into his arms, sweep away to his bed chambers, and brand as his with everything that he had to give.
It's my rut. I only want her because of my rut.
It was the only logical explanation he could come up with, and his hardened length pressing against the inside of his pants seemed to lend credence to that line of thinking. His inner Alpha was driving him crazy with the desire to dominate and copulate, and had he not already had years of practice defying Shukaku's demands of him, Gaara was certain that he would have gone after Sakura without a second thought.
The only thing a man in his position could do was to secret himself away, so that he would not pose a menace to his village, and wait out his rut. The average rut lasted anywhere from three to five days, but since it was his first, Gaara had no idea what to expect. Cocooned in a prison of his own making, he could only pick at the mesh of his shirt that was tacking uncomfortably to his skin, and when he swallowed the lump in his dry throat, he became aware of how unprepared he was to spend an unknown number of days out in the desert with no rations to speak of.
An approaching chakra signature pulsed brightly in his awareness, and more of his sand layered over his Ultimate Defence automatically. Gaara had to will his sand to part in front of him - enough that he could peek and see who dared to approach him so deep in his domain. He flexed his fingers to get blood flowing into them, ready to command the sand around him to drown the approaching person if necessary.
As it turned out, it was unnecessary.
At first, all he could make out was a hopping, up-and-down movement in the distance; definitely not human. It was too large to be any of the common desert-dwelling animals he knew of, and he instinctively readied several solidified sand spikes trained in the direction of the approaching figure. It was when it drew closer that the redhead could make out its white fur coat and an oversized scythe it bore on its back, and only then did he allow the sand spikes to fall back to the ground as tiny granules.
Temari's weasel summon continued its loping pace towards the sand sphere, coming to a stop about a dozen metres or so away. Once he recognised that Kamatari was waiting for him to come forward, Gaara ordered enough of his sand sphere to fall away so that he could step outside.
As rigid as a statue, Kamatari stood its ground and waited for the redhead to approach, its small nose twitching cautiously as it sniffed the air. When Gaara was close enough to reach out and touch the white fur atop the weasel's head, it bopped its head up and down in quick succession, then bowed as its arms unfolded to deposit a fair-sized wicker basket on the ground. Chittering once, it backed away slowly to let the young man know that it was ready to leave now that its task was done, and it vanished in a puff of smoke before Gaara could say his thanks.
It would not do to stay out in the open in the brutal cold of the desert night, and Gaara gathered up the basket before retreating back into his sphere of sand. Once inside, he commanded his sand to seal him back up, leaving a small opening at the top so that some moonlight could bleed into the darkened space. Taking the cloth cover off the basket, he started going through its contents - a change of his usual shinobi gear (sans robes), bottled water, an assortment of food such as cured meat and protein bars, more apples, and…
It hit the ground with a 'thump' muffled by sand as Gaara's fingers briefly lost their grip. A single shard of moonlight falling on the object caused an almost mirror-like reflection off its unmarred skin, and he inhaled too loudly-sharply-deeply as his senses registered what he had dropped.
Bright red like his hair, firm and plump with juices from a thousand tiny seeds - a thousand promises.
All within one single pomegranate.
Her. It smells like her.
His fingers trembled briefly as he leaned forward to retrieve the fruit from the ground, and he then brought it up to his nose to inhale its fragrance. He had never cared for pomegranates, having once seen the disturbing mess of blood-like red seeds that was under its skin when one rolled off a farmer's cart and splattered on the stoned-lined streets of their market district. Its essence was too subdued with the barrier of its skin, and with sharpened fingers he dug firmly into the thick, smooth skin to peel it back effortlessly.
With the first peek of its red seeds, there rushed forth a maelstrom of smells - something akin to sweet, fine wine, and the contrasting tartness of a fruit that served only to accentuate the honey-like lusciousness that seemed to flood his lungs with every breath he took. Tearing even further into the fruit, he broke it into halves and scrapped a mouthful of the red seeds with his teeth into his waiting mouth.
The echo of a thunderstorm, roaring inside his skull.
A resounding rumble in his chest as his teeth crunched down into the seeds, sending a gush of its tangy sweetness over his tongue. It soothed the parchedness of his throat as he swallowed, the taste lingering coyly before vanishing.
More.
Like a starving beast he lurched forward, cradling the pomegranate in one hand as he dug out the fleshy seeds with the other to shovel into his mouth. Red juice ran out the corners of his lips, dribbling down his jaw and chin. The first half of the pomegranate devoured, he scrambled for the other, and crammed it into his eager mouth even faster than before. When there were no more of the tiny seeds to be had, he shoved his tongue forward into its crevasses, lapping and licking and begging for just one more taste of her.
This must be what her essence tastes like, he thought to himself, and it was all too-easy to imagine that he was buried between her trembling thighs as his tongue sought out more-more-more of her sweetness with each lick as he feasted on the hollowed-out fruit.
"Sakura." Her name left his lips in a whispered prayer, and he reached inside his pants to fist his almost-painful erection, exposing himself boldly in the privacy of his defences. Behind the skin of his eyelids he saw the flushed redness of her neck as he mouthed her boldly, remembered how his fingers ghosted the front of her soaking cunt just before he realised how close he was to unwittingly claiming her. I should have done that, he thought to himself as he clenched his teeth, tongue desperately seeking out the remnants of the fruit in his mouth, his hips jerking in counterpoint to his stroking hand. It did not take more than a few pumps from his juice-coated fingers before he was brazenly moaning her name as he came in trembling, shaking spurts, his semen splattering noiselessly onto the sand beneath his feet before being absorbed by the desert; leaving nothing of his shame behind.
He fell backwards, landing on his shivering hunches as he panted. Fingers sliding stickily down his still hard cock, he paused when he reached the base of his erection; here was something new - a very obvious bulging at the base of his shaft where there was once none. When he squeezed it lightly in a pale imitation of an Omega lock - the manner in which one's Omega partner would instinctively clamp down on the Alpha's cock to keep them bound together after orgasm - the wonderful pressure caused his teeth to clack shut violently as he swallowed down a lustful moan.
An Alpha knot, he realised. That's right, my body is different now.
An Alpha would develop a knot just before ejaculation, but only during their ruts or their mate's heat, when their biology would prime them both for the purpose of procreation. Once ejaculation occurs inside the Omega, the resulting knot would lock them both in place and prevent the Alpha's semen from spilling out. Combined with the Omega lock, this greatly increased the chances of fertilisation. Pressure on the knot was extremely pleasurable for an Alpha, as Gaara just found out, and he could not help encircling it with his hand to coax a few more spurts of cum out of his still-hard cock. He only stopped when there was nothing left for him to milk out of his shaft, but even as he heaved and gulped greedy breaths of air to steady his limbs, he was aware that he was still half-hard, and that this would not be the last time he would be touching himself for the next few days.
Fuck.
Pushing his fringe out of his eyes, Gaara's gaze fell on the empty halves of the pomegranate in front of him; a rumbling glower emitted from his throat as clarity began seeping into the edges of his mind, clearing away the fog of his rut for the time being. It would begin anew before long - this desire to fuck and mark his chosen Omega. But he could not afford to be careless in his approach if he wanted his desired outcome to manifest; there was no more Shukaku to blame for his lack of self-control, and he would be damned if he ruined his chances before they could come to be.
So it was to Temari and Kankurou's great surprise when sand began to gather in the observatory, conjured up from the pockets of it which Gaara had secreted into every corner of the Kazekage manor. Piling high, the granules came to take the shape of their Kazekage, and Kankurou's teacup shattered loudly against the wooden floor in his haste to rise to his feet.
"Gaara?" He asked.
Instead of acknowledging his brother, the sand clone turned his attention to Temari, who involuntarily withered under the coolness of his dusty-coloured gaze.
"Bring me more pomegranates."
Swallowing, Temari gave a curt nod, and finally found her voice to ask, "Do you want anything else?"
The sand clone shifted its weight from one foot to another, as if milling things over. Several seconds later, it stood tall and proud, and commanded, "Send a message to the Hokage. Tell them I want Haruno Sakura."
