Chapter Text
When he scented her on the wind, his entire world ground to a halt. It was primal, it pulled at something in his guts like a hook, and everything- the droid, the map, Skywalker- all became secondary to her.
Her. The girl. His mate.
She was frightened, he could smell it. Of course she was, the sound of battle in the distance, his troopers hot on the trail of her and her droid. He didn’t think she had scented him yet, the wind blowing the wrong way, but he was almost glad. He wanted to look in her eyes when she realized.
Blaster shots, which he aptly deflected. His omega had fire; no helpless, whimpering cliche to be found. She was frightened, backing away and breathing rapidly, but she still kept pulling the trigger.
He pushed her arm down with the Force, and finally stepped close.
“The girl I've heard so much about.”
Her eyes were wide, and her nostrils flared.
“Oh,” she whimpered.
The Force snapped taut. It was like tunnel vision, like the universe rearranged itself into a single thread, a single lifeline directly to her.
His breath echoed loudly inside his helmet, his heartbeat rapid, and he didn’t even realize he had reached for her until she whimpered. He held her jaw in his hand, the black of his gloves looking so threatening against her freckled skin.
The Force practically sang with their proximity, and it was all too easy to push into her mind, ravenous and desperate for anything, everything, he just needed to know more he needed-
“Sir,” Kylo felt his lips pull back in a silent snarl at the two idiots stupid enough to interrupt them, “Resistance fighters. We need more troops.”
Resistance? He gave his head a little shake; the forest, the sound of the battle, his mission. It all came flooding back to him in a rush. He had to get ahold of himself.
He looked back to the girl, still trembling and wide-eyed, and his mind caught like a snare on an image from the frenzied rush of her thoughts.
The map. They didn’t need the droid. They just needed her.
“Pull the division out,” he commanded. “We have what we need.”
Sleep. He pushed the demand into her mind, and her eyes fluttered closed as he swept the lithe little omega into his arms.
His omega. The thought alone felt victorious, and he held her tightly as they made their way back to the transport.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Alone in the interrogation room, just the scent of her driving him mad, but he would wait. There was the matter of the map, and then...
She jerked awake.
“Where am I?”
He considered her, then licked his lips. “You’re my guest.”
“Where are the others?” He could smell her fear, but she was trying to will it away. She was putting up a fight of defiance that he couldn’t help but admire.
“You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends? You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.”
She glared, and he could feel her anger like the color red.
“You still want to kill me,” he breathed curiously, and she grit her teeth.
“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”
Creature. Not a man, not her destined mate, creature.
He brought his hands up to the latches on either side of his helmet, and they released with a hiss.
Her eyes went wide. He stood still for her silent, startled appraisal before stepping forward, keeping his eyes on her even as he casted away his mask.
Her breath was quick, her lips slightly parted, and he stepped close to her with barely contained want. Her scent was clearer, sharper without his mask, and he saw her visibly shiver as he got close to her.
She could smell him too, and he knew it was causing those beautiful brown eyes to dilate, the flush to come to her cheeks, her soft, anxious pants.
“Creature?” he questioned softly, cocking his head slightly to the side and bracing his hands on the metal on either side of her hips, “Is that any way to talk to your alpha?”
“You are not my alpha,” she growled, trying to sound convincing, but he could hear the waver in her voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured reassuringly. “I feel it too.”
She shivered, defiantly looking away from him, and Kylo couldn’t stop himself from leaning in, pressing his nose against the side of her neck and taking a slow inhale. She tensed, and he could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse.
She smelled incredible, and he trembled at the way it made heat pool in his groin, his body throbbing with the desire to claim her. He let his breath out slowly through his mouth, and she made a whimpering sound. Another breath in, and the sharp tang of her arousal nearly made him lightheaded.
“You do feel it,” he murmured. “You know what this is, little scavenger. You know this is Recognition.”
“No,” she rasped. “I refuse.”
“You refuse?” he lifted his head, and her eyes snapped back to his; angry, defiant.
“I refuse,” she hissed again, her look so determined, so serious, that he could do nothing but pull back.
There was no point, no satisfaction in taking an omega who was unwilling. There was no victory to be had from an omega who did not beg to be claimed, to be taken and pleasured by their alpha.
He would change her mind. They had Recognized, the Force pulling them together like gravity; she was meant to be his, he was meant to be hers. He just needed time, he needed to prove himself to her.
“We’ll see,” he said softly, and she glared. He looked at her for another long moment, and greedily inhaled the scent of her arousal that still clung to the air.
“Tell me about the droid.”
She looked taken aback, and he stared patiently at her as she frowned at him.
“What?”
“You refuse me,” he said softly. “So my duties now require me to treat you as my prisoner. The droid. We know it contains a piece of the map to Skywalker. I know you’ve seen it.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” she growled, and he couldn’t help the bit of a smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“We’ll see,” he said again.
He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this; pushing into her mind, feeling her resistance to him when she should have been welcoming, but she had left him no choice. She would not give herself to him, so he would take the map to Skywalker.
Her loneliness, her fear, her desperate ache for belonging, for family; it felt like a clamp around his heart, and sorrow sang through him. He could give her all of those things, she was his mate, everything she sought was right here, was right in front of her for the taking.
He forced himself to push it all aside; the map. He needed the map.
The power inside her suddenly unfurled, lashing out, and he was left breathless.
“You,” she panted, and his chest constricted at the second hard push of her mind. “You’re afraid... that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader!”
He yanked away, withdrawing the Force inside himself and cutting her out, his body reeling back from hers.
She was strong with the Force- kriff, of course she was, she was his. An alpha and omega unlike any others; Recognized, willed to be mates by the Force itself, of course she was his equal. It made the want inside him boil, it made him want to claim her, right here, right now, made him want to curl around her power as her slick drenched his knot.
He took a step back toward her, and she threw herself against the restraints aggressively, a snarl curling her lips.
“I refuse!” she spat, even as the air thickened with the scent of their mutual desire.
He needed to leave. Now. Before he did something he regretted.
He took up his helmet, jamming it on his head before leaving the room with a furious growl.
Even when she would later take up her blade against him, all he could do was want her.
She was with the traitor, his beta scent all over her, and worse, his father’s scent, and Kylo’s vision went red.
He wouldn’t hurt her, he’d rather die, but she had to stay! If that meant fighting her, besting her so he could take her again, make her stay until she said yes, until she gave in to the inevitability that was them, then he would.
He was left with nothing but scars, and a horrible, aching howl for his mate.
Rey felt it too, he knew she did. She growled at him with such fury through the Force, called him a monster and a snake, but he felt it every time they laid eyes on each other. The pull, the want.
He couldn’t catch her scent through these visions, and it drove him mad, but the pull in his chest, the tether through the Force yanking on their hearts... she felt it too.
She must have, or she wouldn’t have come to him. She wouldn’t have called out for him on Ahch-To, reaching her hand out for him across light years. She wouldn’t have let him feel her longing, her ache, her loneliness. The Force wouldn’t have given her such a glimpse of the future, it wouldn’t have shown him her past.
It took everything he had not to take her right there in that elevator. Her scent surrounding him, in such a small space, was an intoxicating torture. She stepped so close to him, and he prayed that she wouldn’t touch him, because if she did, if he felt the heat of her skin, it would all be over.
“Ben,” she whispered, his old name feeling so intimate from her lips that he shivered. “When we touched hands I saw your future. Just the shape of it, but solid and clear. You’ll turn. I’ll help you.”
He ached, everything in him calling out for her, demanding him to say yes, to worship this beautiful omega who had finally wanted to give herself to him.
He couldn’t. Not yet.
He knew that he would rather die than hurt her. He also knew he would kill to protect her.
The air of the throne room was thick with the scent of blood. It drove at a hunger in him; a hot, demanding call to violence, to revenge, to retribution for all the beat-down and grinding under Snoke’s heel he had suffered for so very long.
And her. His fiery omega, his warrior goddess who was submissive for no one, deep in the bloodbath with him, her aggression and her righteous anger like lightning through their bond.
He wanted her. He wanted to claim her right on the hard durasteel floor, drink in her scent, hear her moan and beg for his knot with their bodies high on adrenaline. It was practically primal, animalistic, and he wanted it.
But she was holding on. To the pathetic dreams of the Resistance, the Jedi, the family who had never loved her and were never coming back.
He could give her a family. He would worship the ground she walked on, he would be the most devoted mate in the galaxy, he would protect and provide for her and their children. She just had to let go.
“Join me,” he begged her, all of him desperate for her to take his hand. “Please.”
Having her flee from him again was like getting ripped apart.
He’d burn that Force-forsaken Resistance to the ground. He’d burn the whole fucking galaxy down until there was nothing left for her but him.
But kneeling on the ground with his father’s dice, staring at her disappointed face through their bond, all he wanted to do was die.
“It’s not too late,” she said to him, over and over, every time the bond flared to life, every time the Force brought them together, able to see but not scent or really, truly touch. “Ben, please. You don’t want to rule the galaxy, I know you don’t.”
She was right, of course she was right, but it all just hurt and he didn’t know how to get out, what the right path was anymore, if he would even be able to follow it.
“Just come home,” Rey whispered to him. “Just be my alpha, not the Supreme Leader.”
My alpha my alpha my alpha.
It haunted him, day and night, those words from her lips, the promise that they held.
“My alpha,” she whispered, in his bed, the Force cruelly bringing them together in the middle of the night, taunting him with the promise of what he did not have.
Her hand reached out, and he held his breath until her palm made contact with his cheek.
No visions, just warmth, and suddenly he could smell her. His omega, mouthwateringly perfect and...
In heat. She was in heat.
In an instant he was rolling her under him, pressing his face into her neck and breathing deep, his head dizzy with how fast he was hard.
“Ben,” she tugged on his hair, her hips rolling up against him desperately. “Ben please.”
“Rey,” he moaned, the feel of their bond pounding in his chest beside his heart, and her scent driving at every instinct he had to claim her, to pleasure her, to fill her with his knot and keep her full of his seed.
He licked a hot stripe along her neck, his eyes almost rolling up into his head at the salty sweet taste of her skin, then she disappeared.
He roared in frustration, pounding his fist against the mattress in a rage.
Why was the Force so cruel to him? Why did it taunt him with the vision of his mate, his mate in heat, only to rip her away from him?
He threw himself onto his back on the bed, breathing hard and shaking with emotion and unslaked need.
It was like the weight of a ship crashing down onto his chest, looking around the cold, black walls of his quarters, listening to the hum of the Finalizer, breathing in the flat, recycled air.
What was the point of all this? He hated this, he hated every minute of it, hated it from the moment she left, the moment he gripped a furious coil of the Force around Hux’s neck and demanded control.
He had the galaxy at his fingertips, had worked to quell every flare of resistance to the First Order’s power.
For what? Why? For who?
His mate was beyond his reach, and she would remain so as long as he let his contrived version of his destiny control him. No, Snoke’s version of his destiny.
His legacy. Heir apparent to Lord Vader.
He hated his legacy. He had felt trapped by it from the moment he was old enough to understand the weight of it. Skywalker. Organa. Solo. Born of legends, and betrayed by them.
He was tired. He just wanted rest, to be free of the demands of his lineage. He would never achieve that here. He would never, ever be free within the confines of the First Order.
“Enough,” he whispered to the darkened room. “I've had enough.”
He closed his eyes, reaching out through the Force, coiling himself around the tendrils of their bond.
She answered the call, her need for him setting his heart into a rapid burst.
Where are you? he demanded. I'm coming to you. I'm coming to take care of you.
He let her see, let her feel his resolve, opened his heart and his mind to her with no reservations anymore. He was tired of running and he was tired of fighting.
Arda, she whispered across the bond, and his heart soared. Find me on Arda.
His TIE Silencer ripped across the stars, and for the first time, he felt completely like himself. There was no insidious Snoke gripping his heart, there was no weight of the First Order, no Skywalker legacy. Just him and the Force and the black, star strewn space guiding him to his mate, to the only other person in the galaxy who truly mattered.
She had isolated the Falcon, hidden her amongst the trees of a long, lonely forest, everything still and white with snow.
It was almost too fitting, that they should reunite in a place like this; in a forest like the one on Takodana, where he had first caught the scent that would change the trajectory of his life forever. Like the forest on Starkiller, cold and covered with crisp snow, though he hoped that this time the marks she left on his body would be from the fervor of their coupling, not anger and fear.
He landed his ship beside hers, his heart pounding and his blood hot with anticipation.
The hiss of the Falcon’s ramp was a sound he had heard his entire life, but the flood of scent that poured out of the tired old ship nearly made his knees weak.
The sight of her, hair completely loose around her head, her face flushed, her pupils wide, and her lips parted as she breathed in soft, rapid pants actually did makes his knees go weak.
“Go to your bed,” he growled with as much restraint as he could muster. “Or I'm fucking you right here on this ramp.”
She trembled with a little moan that nearly broke him, but ran on swift heels back into the ship.
He forced himself to count to ten before he stepped onto the ramp, the hiss of it closing behind him feeling like a strange, heavy mark of time in the universe.
Then the scent of her heat was all around him, and his restraint was completely spent.
He tore through the ship after her, his blood pounding in his ears and his body hot with desperation.
She was sitting on her bunk, waiting for him, and he pushed her down onto it with barely achieved control.
Then she was wrapping herself around him with a whimper, and control went right out the window.
Hot, fuck, she was so hot, he could feel her even through his thick clothing, her simple pants and shirt damp with sweat. He groaned, pressing his face against the burning skin of her neck, and her scent sent his whole body on fire.
What he had experienced in the Force bond had been nothing, nothing compared to the scent of her heat in reality.
“How long have you been like this?” he growled demandingly, sliding his hand into her hair on the back of her head and taking it into a tight grip that made her whimper.
“Two days,” she gasped as he forced her head back, exposing her throat for the ravage of his mouth. “I- oh! I- I left as soon as it started, I knew the alphas would-"
The alphas would want her, would try to claim what was not rightfully theirs.
The thought alone made his blood boil with possessiveness, the idea of any alpha scenting her, pursuing her, trying to stake claim on an omega that was spoken for, that did not want them.
He shoved her knees apart and she keened, arching up as he pressed the hard bulge in the front of his trousers against the slick-wet crotch of her pants with a furious growl.
“This is the only knot you will ever take,” he hissed darkly, staring into her heavy-lidded eyes as she panted. “The only alpha that will ever satisfy you.”
“I know,” she whispered with a whimper, arching up into the press of thickness and squeezing her thighs around him so perfectly tight. “I know, that’s why I ran. I couldn’t stand the scent of any man that wasn’t you.”
Perfect, his omega was kriffing perfect and Ben almost felt lightheaded with the sharp wave of want that surged through his blood.
Now. He needed her right fucking now.
He ripped her shirt over her head and shoved her pants down and off in seconds, making her moan and tremble, her hands fumbling with his thick belt.
His clothes were more laborious to get off, and he almost tore them in his haste to be rid of them.
“Oh fuck, oh kriff,” she moaned at the sight of his bare flesh, and his mind flashed back to the first time she had seen this much of his skin, when she had asked with tears in her eyes why he had killed his father.
That connection had been agony, intimate in a way he hadn’t been prepared for, watching her watching him with so much of himself on display. The pull to each other was always intense, but that had stirred up feelings in them both that were hard to hide away again.
Now they didn’t have to, and as soon as he was finally, completely free of his clothes she was pulling him against her.
“Please, please,” she begged, raising her hips and clutching at him with desperate hands, and he was completely powerless to refuse her.
There were so many things he wanted to do, so many things he thought about, obsessed over; how her slick would taste, the feel of his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her thighs, her belly, her breasts, getting her off on his fingers, the impact of his hips against her ass as he fucked her from behind.
Two days was too long for her to be like this, wet and desperate for her alpha’s knot, and he would not leave her like that a moment longer.
She cried out as he pushed inside her with a swift jerk of his hips, and he had never experienced anything so perfect as the feel of her hot, clenching pussy desperately squeezing his cock.
“Fuck,” he gasped, his body setting a punishing pace, but she did nothing but whine and beg for more.
The Force crackled around them like electricity, winding them tighter and tighter. There would be no going back from this, nothing in this galaxy or beyond it that could sever this mated bond, not even death.
He hungered for it like nothing else in his entire life, his fragmented soul desperate and hurting for the piece that would bring everything into balance inside him, everything into peace.
He dragged his mouth along her neck, licking, biting, marking her with his teeth, with his scent, his brain lost in a fog of lust so deep he didn’t even feel the bruises her fingers were leaving on the back of his neck as she keened and started to come.
She pulled so tight he couldn’t do anything but bury himself inside her with a broken moan, and just like that his knot was filling, responding to the frantic clench and pulse of her pussy.
“Ben,” she gasped, overwhelmed tears in her eyes as her orgasm slammed into her all at once, and there wasn’t a power in the universe that could keep him from coming with her.
It was like being buried alive, the Force coiling around them and inside them as his knot locked in the vise of her squeezing, trembling cunt.
He was dimly aware of her crying out at the hard sink of his teeth into the juncture of her neck, his head filled with white noise and his body thrashing with hers as their peak dragged on for a small eternity.
The power suddenly broke, the Force shattering like broken glass, and it was like being sucked into a vacuum.
He slowly became aware of her soft whines, both of them shuddering and rocking dazedly as his knot throbbed in time with his heart.
He slowly released the pressure of his teeth, licking soothingly at the deep indents he had left behind that were sure to bruise. There was smug, deep satisfaction that hummed through him at the thought, and he licked at it again.
Rey shivered, her arms and legs curled weakly around him with soft whines and whimpers exhaled on every breath.
“Shhhh,” he whispered gently, trailing his mouth up her neck and along her jaw. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
He had made an error, he realized. A truly stupid, boneheaded mistake; an utterly grave oversight.
He hadn’t kissed her yet. He was rocking his knot inside her, riding the rhythmic clenching of her body as his cock pumped her full of his come, their mate bond practically vibrating through the Force, but he hadn’t even kissed her.
He fixed that immediately, swallowing down her overwhelmed whines until they tapered off, until she seemed to come back to herself with a soft sigh.
She stroked his hair softly, and Ben pressed a final soft, chaste kiss to her mouth before opening his eyes and looking down at her.
Rey opened her own eyes sleepily, looking so beautifully pleasure blissed and perfect.
Her heat wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but sated, for now.
“My alpha,” she murmured with a little smile.
He kissed her again; his perfect, fierce omega.