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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

It was a small and quaint village that was the source of your departure from the cabin in the forest. With a heavy list of things scrawled onto cheap yellow notepaper that was shoved into your pocket, and a series of things you needed to accomplish, you had no choice but to leave the home you'd inherited and face the new world around you. It was a debilitating risk that made your heart feel tightly bound in wire within your chest, and you had placed your emotional cycle briefly on pause.  

But even the smallest attempt to keep it under control was stymied by the threat of your emotional state climbing the guardrails you nailed in place. It was inevitable, the hormones from your pregnancy could only be held back for so long, and you were bound to cry again for the loss of an alpha who never really cared, and the little life that was depending on you.  

It wasn’t a choice anymore, you didn’t have the luxury of being able to decide whether this was something you wanted to do, or something you had to do. This was a necessity, if you couldn’t get the wood furnace working to heat the rest of the home, it wouldn’t amount to anything good once winter would hit. You could count on the fireplace in the living room however that would only produce so much heat, and you would have to actively be aware of the fire throughout the night.  

At least with the wood burning furnace, once you had a large enough piece of wood to slowly burn, you could be able to maintain a steady heat throughout the cabin. However, there was something wrong with one of the sensors, or one of the panels, and you would have to find someone to fix it. You wouldn’t be able to fix it on your own even if you had the tools and the parts, the furnace was well built but everything was written in German, and your little and basic understanding wouldn’t get you anywhere.  

All in all, the venture into the village was as life dependent as it was a chance to show your face and get to know people. This was going to be your home for a considerable future, and you would have to make people aware that you were there. You were pregnant, you would be making trips into the village for supplies for yourself and your baby, socializing with people you might have to rely on was vital.  

The first stop you had made into the village was a multipurposed hardware store that had offered repairs services on the side. You had parked your vehicle on the side street by the public parking rows and made your way down the pavement toward the front door of the white stone and wooden building. The handcrafted wooden sign hanging above the door was the indication that you were in the right place, and you had climbed the three small steps to get to the door.  

You inhaled slowly, building up nerves to cross the threshold and attempt to put your limited German to use to try and seek help. The moment your hands had rested on the door handle, and you pushed, you were almost immediately tripped by an orange cat with one ear that went flying by you. The furry creature darted into the hardware store before you, jumping effortlessly onto a long wooden counter with a register nearest the door. Once you had entered the store and closed the door behind you, the cat had perched on the desk and meowled at you, tilting its head as if to demand a greeting.  

You balanced the English German translation book you had brought with you under your arm in order to give the cat a scratch behind its remaining ear, rubbing its head after it so loudly demanded you to. While you were looking around the store at the shelves that were organized in long rows with aisles that led to a series of two desks set up near the back of the store, likely a place where someone could hire contractors or order bulk supplies.  

“Guten morgan.” A woman had stepped out from one of the shelves, setting a plastic basket full of packages screws and nails down on the desk, her greying brown hair pulled back into a low ponytail that was draped over her shoulder. “Brauchen Sie etwas?”  

You looked at the woman with a slightly uneased expression, trying to detect and pick apart any words that you could have easily detected in German. From the tone of voice, you could surmise that she was asking you if you needed help, and you had grabbed your English German book and flipped open the pages, stumbling over the pronunciation.  

“Guten morgan.” You finally spoke, getting the greeting down without a struggle, however it was the rest that had caught you off guard. “Ich muss einen...”  

Your thumbed through the translation book in your hands, your stomach felt like it was twisting with anxiety when you felt the woman’s staring you down. “Ofen reparieren-”  

“Englisch?” The woman had cut you off before you could truly finish, moving closer toward you and the register you were standing nearby. “You are English, ja?”  

“My German is terrible, I’m really sorry.” You closed the book with a sigh, and that guard you had on your emotions was quickly starting to crumble as you spoke. “I just moved into a cabin out of the village and the wood furnace isn’t working. I don’t know if it’s the senor or if it’s something else but-”  

“Ah you need a fix.” The woman had sensed your nervousness, how could she not when you were stumbling over your words while actively looking as if you were about to cry. To your emotional state, she had tilted her head and looked you over before her attention flit toward the desks near the back. “Come with me.”  

You turned away from the door and followed the woman away from the register, taking the same path as she had through the long aisles of tools, big and small, toward the set of desks in the back. As you walked the orange cat with one ear followed you, its tail sticking straight up in the air, swishing occasionally as if it were the real tour guide and not this woman.  

“Sit here.” She was direct in her order for you to sit on the desk at the left, and you took a seat where she instructed, setting your book in front of you while the notepad of your other tasks remained in your pocket.  Your knee bounced beneath the desk, a nervous tick that you’d always seemed to have, while the reminder of what you were doing here was hinging on your success. There was little you could do and accomplish if you didn’t get this furnace fixed before the temperatures started dipping.  

Not to mention you would need a doctor, or at the very least find a walk-in clinic, someplace that could look after you during your pregnancy. Or at the very least, try and find a midwife to help you.  

You waited for the woman for fifteen minutes before she had walked back out from the back offices and had taken a seat in front of you. With a requisition form requesting information about your repairs, she was quick to inform you in English that there was a wait period for someone to come and look at what was wrong with your furnace. It was her husband and her son who did the repairs, not just for the people and businesses in the village, but for others who lived on the outskirts like yourself.  

You took the form and the pen she had given you to fill out the requisition form, and while it wasn’t ideal, it was your only option. You couldn’t do this yourself; you couldn’t have possibly understood the process of fixing a wood furnace even if everything was written in English and the parts were there for you. You would have to wait; you would have to bide your time and do what you could on your own merit and on your own time.  

With no immediate remedy available, you had given the woman your thanks and handed the form off before you stood. You took your translation book with you and started heading out toward the front door, once again almost getting taken down by that same cat. You sighed just as you had before, giving the orange furry ball a pet goodbye before you left.  

**************************************  

He had no idea what drew him to the little cafe on the main street, the one that was located between the flower shop and the general store on the other side. It wasn’t as if the imposing alpha, well known in the Austrian village, was a stranger to anyone within the small, populated town. And the cafe that he found himself steadily walking toward was one that he had frequented often when he had to leave his property for supplies, however there was something in his bones that felt different.  

It was as if he was being drawn toward the bakery and cafe, pulled there by some invisible force that had taken possession of the old colonel. Whether that be an order that he was given by some unforeseen force, or one of his alpha instincts, it was a directive he could not turn down. König walked with a rushed gait toward the front entrance, his large hand yanking opens the door to step foot inside the traditional Austrian bakery with no reasonable excuse to be here. And once inside, he had taken a long and studious look around the cafe, trying to pinpoint the causality that registered as so fucking urgent in his mind.  

It seemed as if nothing was out of the ordinary in this cafe, nothing that would have withhold his bodily autonomy from turning around and leaving. There were tasks that the beast of an alpha had to accomplish before he could enjoy being on a few weeks leave from the KorTac base. A distraction that had blindsided him was neither easily accepted or understood, and the patience he held for himself was deliberately thin.  

Of the catalysts that could have spurred this great invisible hand that forced him to enter the cafe like there was a fire lit under his ass, he knew it had nothing to do with the locals. It was neither the owner of the cafe and bakery nor the patrons that had all come to know him as a PMC soldier, that had been the tugging force that brought him here. And the further he had cast his attention around the counter where he would place his order, and the main sitting area, the closer he had come to the conclusion that he was wrong.  

That this was all some grave mistake, a symptom of being tired from the constant long hours and the missions that took him through hell while he was deployed. There was no cognitive to the urgency that he felt upon approaching the front door.  

He had almost turned and left, the alpha with an exhaustion weighing heavily on his shoulders had almost said to hell with this invisible force that had inhibited its own desires upon his autonomy. König was already shifting on his heels to turn and leave, giving up on the fool’s errand when he had caught the glimmer of someone in the corner of his eyes.  

Why he hadn’t seen this omega when he first walked into the building was almost as confounding as why he was brought here to begin with. He would have walked right past you, twice, without noticing you were there. But now that he had seen you, sitting huddled at a table near the back corner by a window, he felt that same familiar tug as before.  

Fate. An unforeseen force. Whatever fucked up alpha instinct had told him that he needed to see this particular omega, it didn’t matter in the end what the cause was.  

He was here now, and the further he was drawn toward you, the clearer it had become that something had intervened. And the further he got to this omega sitting by herself, the clearer your scent was able to be picked up amongst the mix of smells that filled the cafe.  

Your scent was soft and airy, clean and refreshing. Vanilla that was trailing lilac, and the smell of something sweet like strawberries that reminded König of the strawberry patch his mother grew back at his childhood home. Your scent was beckoning to him like a siren’s call, like you were a phantom voice that had spoken to him through the thick hedges of darkness, a light that he had never seen before but desperately wanted to touch.  

It was improbable, a fight that was building within himself over the rationality that he was just a man that had just seen a pretty girl, and the deeper part of himself that knew he was an alpha who caught hold of a scent that had spoken to him. Not that he was the kind of alpha or man who thought fate had a hand in his future, in deciding who or what was the best combination of attributes for a mate.  

But it was no accident; he had to at least admit that.  

There was something that made him come here, something that had brought him to this very spot where an omega, a young pretty omega, who he had never seen before, was sitting. And it didn’t take a genius to understand that the rumors he had heard, about a new omega moving to this small village, was one and the same now.  

König had heard the millings, the whispering conversations of a pregnant omega who was abandoned by an alpha who didn’t want her. That was you, he surmised, and given the velocity of the rumors and how they had spread, you had only been here for days.  

He had scrambled to dig into his mind for the rest of the gossip he had heard since he had been back to the village. One, of course, was that you were pregnant and single—the alpha who got you pregnant was long gone—and that you were living in the cabin that was only a few miles from his own.  

But there was more wasn’t there? What else had he heard?  

That your furnace was broken, the same kind of wood furnace that had in his own cabin, and that the list of people waiting for repair services was long. Of course, your name was on the list, but you were pregnant, and you couldn’t wait forever.  

That same urgency that led him to the cafe had also directed him toward your table, and the approach of this massive alpha in front of you had certainly taken you by surprise. Hellfire could come and consume him in the moment, swallowing him whole and burning flesh from bone and König still wouldn’t have passed—because the moment your eyes land on his, and he sees those big anxious eyes, he fucking breaks.  

He's a beast, he’s a damn monster on the battlefield who has gone after terrorists, had been shot at and hunted down. He's a colonel, a battering ram an insertion specialist, he’s handled hostage deals and has earned a reputation within korTac.  

But you, a teary-eyed omega who’s pregnant and abandoned, staring at him with those eyes, and he feels as if his heart and soul are being ripped out of his body.  

It’s almost too reminiscent of his own life, with a mother who raised a little boy on her own when his father abandoned them both. And his mother raised König with all she had, providing her big boy with everything she had to offer him, even if it meant she worked tirelessly and to the bone.  

“I’m sorry, did you want to sit here?” Your things were slightly scattered on the table, an English German translation book, pregnancy tests spilling out of your bag, a phone that was lying face up on the table, a copy of the requisition form for the repairs. A list of other things that needed to be done was written on an old yellow notepad, slipping out of your bag like the pregnancy tests, and with a sense of urgency you were trying to pick up your things.  

“You are new here.” König pulled out the chair opposite of you and sat down, his hands folded in front of him. It was comical in a series of ways, this hulking and great giant alpha sitting across from an omega that he could very well squish in body height and mass. This alpha who was a soldier from the time he was 17 or 18, looking at a younger omega with red rimmed eyes and slightly puffy cheeks from crying, pregnant and vulnerable.  

“Was it the bad German?” You were attempting to make light of the situation, either that or you were avoiding the obvious question he might have asked next, like why you were crying.  

“I haven’t heard you speak German.” Instead, his response was blunt, and he had still avoided telling you how he knew you weren’t a local. Not that it was hard to tell, you were only here a few days and people had already known your life story, or what you had told anyway.  

“You have the cabin in disrepair,” he continued speaking in a matter-of-fact tone, drawing your attention away from grabbing your things, giving him time to focus on your scent as it had started working its way under his flesh. “You need a furnace fixed.”  

“How did you..?” you were caught off guard, the surprise replacing the threat of tears that were almost ready to spill down your cheeks again.  

“I’m your neighbor, I live a few miles from you.” König had inhaled your scent, subtly trying to get more and more of it, as it seemed to want to be intertwined with his own. The older alpha had never been so drawn, so enraptured with an omega or her scent like this, and he was scrambling to come to terms with it. “I have the same wood furnace I can help fix it for you.”  

It was that same force that drove him into this place that made him speak so freely. He was no longer in control of his mind, of his tongue or his inhibitions to deny a pretty omega when she needed help. It was an urgency; it was instincts, and he was following them blindly.  

“I... what?” You were puzzled, at the very least, as your eyebrows had become furrowed and knit together on your forehead. You were staring at him with a natural cautionary glance, likely so emotionally complexed by your previous alpha that you were unsure of what to say or do around him.  

“I will fix it for you. Tomorrow.” König was out of his element and yet he still approached the problem like a leader he was. The colonel, who was used to taking matters into his own hands and commanding orders to his soldiers, was now taking charge of the situation while being led by instincts he still didn’t quite understand. “You are pregnant, you cannot have a house with no heat. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”  

He pushed his chair back and stood up from the table, giving a curt nod without waiting for confirmation or any response from you beyond the squeak of an omega. König was clear, he was going to fix this for you, despite not even knowing you, because there was a portion of himself that would not rest otherwise.  

And he was following instincts. The same instincts or invisible force, that led him here so randomly, was pushing him to help his new neighbor. By some madness or twist of fate that he might not have even believed in, he agreed anyway.  

And he would be damned if he didn’t feel weak for a little omega who reminded him of his own mother, struggling on her own.  

Chapter Text

Your inability to sleep in the bedrooms upstairs that were still decorated in well-made vintage furniture, had also been the inexplicable draw that kept you from the guest bedroom on the main floor. Your inability to drag yourself to bed had meant that you were sleeping in the living room in front of the roaring fire in the fireplace, while you were attempting to come to terms with how time had felt. 

The mere hours that encompassed a single day of you being in possession of this cabin and making an attempt to come to terms with your station in life, felt like a lifetime. The seconds and minutes that spanned hours had truly felt like lightyears passing by on a distant planet. The light from one planet or solar system that took 6 billion years to reach the next, had felt like the overhanging cloud that hung over you. 

It was a day, days maybe at best, and it felt like this stretch of time would never cease. The emotional draw that made you incapable to dragging yourself to a proper bed the night before, had left you laying on the floor in the living room. Which by extension had made you wonder if that conversation in the cafe with that random alpha that appeared out of nowhere, was your mind trying to create memories where none existed. 

That towering and massive alpha wearing a poor attempt at a mask to cover his face, had appeared like a phantom plague rising from the skiffs of sunlight pouring through the window. How was it possible for an alpha who was so positively massive in both height and muscle mass, to move so slowly and catch you off guard as he had? 

And then for that same alpha to act as some mysterious phantom guardian angel who was also your neighbor? Was it all possible that this could have been the strangest unfolding circumstances to afflict you as of late? 

You were emotionally vulnerable and pregnant, made to try and pick up the pieces of a relationship you were more invested in that your ex, while that said alpha, and ex had given you nothing. They had made it clear that you were on your own and there would be no contact with him from the point where he threw the pregnancy tests back in your face. And now you were un Austria, forced to pick up the pieces of a crumbling mess of a life, desperate to get things in order before your baby came. 

You were currently 3 months pregnant, you had 6 months to get ready for a baby, prepare for a potentially harsh winter while relying on inheritance to survive. There was a lot to be done, and you felt unprepared for what was going to come, even more so with a cabin that needed minor repairs. 

But that alpha, the one you had met at the cafe, the one who had offered to help you fix that furnace of yours, your mind kept relaying back to that conversation. That alpha who said he would come and fix your furnace, the gruffness of his voice as he demanded that he would fix it, not offer but do it. There was an unceremonious doubt you’d harbored for that alpha, as if you were holding out on the possibility that it would actually happen. How could you have so easily been dragged through hell by one alpha who threw your pregnancy tests back in your face, only have another alpha offer to fix a problem for you? 

In the end you didn’t have the ability to doubt much longer than an hour after you had woken up in the morning. As you were starting to rise from the cushion bed, you'd made for yourself on the floor, there was a steady rapping of knuckles on the front door. 

You stumbled to your feet, blanket wrapped tightly around your shoulders as you moved from the living room toward the front door. Your bare feet skidded across the hardwood floor, and your hand had grabbed the doorknob, just as quickly opening it as you could. As you came face to face with the hulking alpha on the other side, you were rendered silenced in shock by his size and the lack of a face mask on his face. 

“You don’t even ask who is on the other side of the door? What if I was coming to take advantage of an omega like yourself?” His blue eyes were piercing, slightly crinkled at the corners from a few lines that had formed as his eyes narrowed. And there was a series of small scars on his face that gave him a rugged appearance without taking away from the qualities of his face that made him attractive. 

Piercing blue eyes that you’d been captivated by before, even when you had seen him in the café, and a head of dirty blonde hair mussed as if he was playing with it before arriving.  

“I-I’m sorry. I was-” you faltered, stumbling over your own excuses while he had stood on the front porch. His scent was a heady mix that was nothing if not addictive, leather, gunpowder and smoke, something earthy and rich. 

He was an alpha who had stacked above you in height, and who outweighed you in pure muscle mass. He was a man who was part beast, part fictional creature that was standing before you on the cusp of your front porch, whilst staring at you as if you were the problem. As if you were the one who was unbelievable and incomprehensible. 

“You are my new neighbor,” his voice had risen with an Austrian German accent, and he had drawn his attention past you toward the interior of your cabin that was only partially visible through the cracked door, “the omega who is pregnant.” 

“Y/N,” you corrected him with your name, speaking over him with the desire to not be called ‘pregnant omega’ over and over again, even if it was the truth. Even if you were the pregnant omega who was scrambling to adjust to a life without the alpha who aided in getting you pregnant in the first place. 

To your name, his eyes had flitted over you again. It was a natural state of wonder, the way his eyes swept over you as if he was analyzing you as a problem that he needed to solve. There was a sturdy silence to him as he watched you with a tilt of his head, and a purse of his lips. There was a tentative understanding, one that you had clearly missed, but he had picked up on, and with the tentative understanding had come acknowledgment with a single nod of his head. 

“I’m here to fix your furnace.” He had acted on his own accord, telling you he was going to do it, not offering but telling you it was going to happen. And you were meant to step aside and let him in without qualms or protests, because what other option did you have? Wait for the repair services that would take weeks? 

“It’s in the back,” you stepped to the side and listened to the creak of the wood floors beneath his weight as he crossed the threshold, and had taken pause to slip off his boots, “there’s the furnace room-” 

“You slept on the floor last night?” His attention had fallen to the makeshift bed you'd crafted for yourself in front of the fireplace, not that it was hard to miss given the scattering of cushions and the blankets. His question had come with slight judgement and the quirk of his eyebrow, in the direction of your decision that you’d yet to clean, and your inability to sleep in a bed. 

“I was busy unpacking.” You shift behind him as you give him an answer, regardless of whether he deserves to know or not, because this alpha was a stranger. Youd felt foolish enough letting him into your cabin to help you fix a furnace, let alone allowing him to stand there judging your choices when you’d exchanged less than fifty words with the alpha. “I was tired-” 

“You are pregnant, single with no alpha to take care of you.” He had muttered under his breath, curtishly drawing himself away from you and the evidence of your haphazard bed, toward the utility rooms at the back. It was as if he had already known where he was going without needing your direction, and as he carted himself toward the back, you trailed off after him. 

Your bare feet echoed on the floor as you moved swiftly after the towering alpha, that blanket still wrapped tightly around your shoulders. You had watched, aimlessly, at the edge of the utility room as the alpha before you had hunched before the wood burning furnace. There was a simple worn bag at his feet, and he had remained silent as he propped the panel off the front with a flathead screwdriver, setting the metal panel to the side to observe the state of the furnace. 

“Do you...want water or something? I can get you something to drink? Or...eat?” You weren’t sure of yourself, of whether you thought you had to stand there and watch him. You had shifted your weight from one foot to the other while he had begun pulling seemingly random tools out of this bag, all while his broad and muscled back was to you. 

He was silent in the direction of your questions, only working for a few minutes in silence before he had paused. He turned his head and looked at you from over his shoulder, his blue eyes flitting over you while you stood there fiddling with the ends of the blanket. You were struck silent, rendered motionless while he observed you, and the cogs in his head were turning the longer he watched you. 

“I’ll just.... leave...” ultimately you had cowed out, backing away from him and his work, turning on your heel as you moved to give him space. You were thrown off emotionally by the rattling social conventions of your life, by the strange draw that had brought this alpha to you in the first place, and the choppy waters that were going to be navigated on some half-assed tin boat. 

It was a situation you had never thought you would be in, and yet here you were standing in the cusp of this cabin, barefooted while an alpha who owed you nothing had simultaneously spared you from freezing in the winter. 

An alpha who you thought you could have loved, had destroyed what blanketed fantasy you had of a potential life. 

While another was in your house, working on a furnace that you needed fixed, without you having to ask. 

It had rendered you confused, altered by your perceptions of what alpha’s could be and what they could do—how could two people of the same designation be so completely opposite of each other? 

You spared your mind the mental task of trying to navigate the differences and spared yourself the thoughts of that old alpha. You had returned to the living room and began cleaning up the mess of the bed you had slept on the previous night, arranging cushions and folding blankets. You worked while the sound of rattling and occasional pounding had come from the utility room, avoiding the general area as to not act as a shadow that was hanging around the mysterious alpha. 

There was little you could do anyway, and soon your attention had fallen from the sounds in the room to the necessitated task of finishing what little unpacking you had to do. There wasn’t much, you had worked yourself into a stupor the previous night, which was partially why you had slept on the floor instead of a bed, and you had very little to do today. Still, you worked on arranging and unpacking, on shifting subtle things here and there until the scent of the alpha had become a presence in your home. 

“The furnace is fixed, there shouldn’t be problems with it again.” The voice of that alpha had startled you from the kitchen, and the appearance of him again had left you feeling conflicted. 

“Thank you,” your response was first of gratitude and then you had looked around your kitchen, thinking of some kind of reward or physical gratitude that you could give him in exchange for his time. “I could pay you-” 

“Pay me?” His tone reflected a tone of offence immediately, and his lips had become pursed with a tight-lipped scowl. “You will have enough to worry about with a baby on the way, and I saved you money with those repair services.” 

“Well, you fixed it, I should thank you-” you had inched forward, your body closing the distance between the two of you, your hands wringing and folding in front of you, a sign of your nervousness that was unyielding. “-or is that what neighbors do for each other here?” 

He was silent, observing you. He was silent until he had drawn his arms across his chest and had taken a wide and speculative gaze around your cabin. There was a silence between the two of you, in this situation that could have very easily become tense or dangerous for the sake of your baby and yourself—it was oddly...peaceful. 

“You don’t have enough wood to last a winter,” he had observed, nodding his head in the direction of the wood shed you could see outside your kitchen window, though you were easily puzzled by the appearance of a healthy stack there. 

“That’s...there’s a lot there.” You had mumbled, following the direction of his eyes and the ire that was building again at your simple comment. “More than I would need.” 

“Nein.” He cut you off with a shake of his head, and a faltering sigh that had weighed on his shoulders, as if this was a burden that he was going to fully embrace upon himself. “Nein, nein, nein...you need seasoned wood. You need wood that has been dried for longer than 6 months, that wood will smoke. You will be...” 

“I didn’t know.” You mumbled and began a slow pace from the kitchen window toward the countertop, grabbing a random apple you’d set there earlier, using the action as a buffer for your thoughts. “I’m terrible at this, I have no idea what I’m doing. I'm three months pregnant, I'm completely alone, and I have no idea how I’m going to-” 

You had bite into the apple, using that piece of fruit as a measure to stop yourself from talking. You were pacing, making a slow berth around the kitchen while this alpha’s eyes were on you, the tilt of his head drawing another curious exchange between the two of you—wherein he likely thought you weren’t with any of the risk to his free time, and doubted whether you’d get through the next few months. 

“You have work to do here, things you cannot do on your own.” His voice was soft, softer than you anticipated, and in the silence that was broken, he had drawn your attention back toward him. “You have no one here for you, you are alone.” 

A statement, not an opinion, but a fact. 

“I am... gone a lot for work.” He had lifted his hand and ran his fingers through the messy blonde tresses at the top of his head, his eyes screwing closed for a moment as that firm hard line returned to his lips. “But if I am here, I will help you fix things. You need the help and I am...my mutter would kill me, even if I am a grown alpha, if she knew I was not doing anything to help-” 

“But I don’t need-” you had opened your mouth to speak, and just as quickly shut it when his gaze had snapped to you, a low rumbling growl in his chest rendering you silent. “-I don’t want to make you feel obligated...” 

“Obligated? And how obligated would I feel if I return from work only to hear that the omega expecting a baby had broken an ankle because of a wooden plank that she wouldn't fix?” The sarcastic air of his voice had done nothing to dissuade the kind of dry laugh that had slipped so freely from your lips. 

It was amusing in a twisted kind of way, the pressure for this random alpha insinuated by his mother, was more than any other alpha had ever done for you. And it was random, it was because of a random happenstance that had brought you to the cafe—and into this alpha’s circle. 

“I will be back in two weeks,” he had approached the front door of your cabin with his things by his side, speaking with such a directive that was unshakeable, “I will fix the steps for you, I will bring seasoned wood that you can use. And you will not sleep on the floor anymore.” 

You stared at him from your position near the living room, hands balled in front of you as he had slipped his boots back on. He had come in with such a whirlwind of demands and this idea that you were just going to listen to him without question, and you didn’t viably want to argue. 

“Thank you,” you mumbled again, watching him open the door and step back out onto the porch, however he didn’t close the door in your face like you expected. 

Rather he had swept his eyes over you, eyebrows furrowed and his jaw ticking tensely. 

“König,” he finally gave you his name and then, after you had repeated it twice, had he closed the door leaving you alone again.  

Chapter Text

There was a subtle shift in his position as he exhaled the air from his lungs, his finger hovering over the trigger. His focus was on the scope, the target he was aiming at had been entirely unaware of the danger they were in. König had waited for the moment he could take the shot, one second and then another before his finger tightened on the trigger.

At the silenced crack of the shot was fire, König had drawn the weapon away from his shoulder and rested it upon the edge of the building he was perched upon. He drew in a breath, so familiarized with the lingering smell of gunpowder that it had become second nature. He waited until he got confirmation before he rose to his feet and lifted the gun, carrying the deadly weapon with the barrel down.

There was weight to his career as a soldier, a density that had remained attached to him like a phantom hovering over his shoulder. What he had made of himself during his years serving was a far cry from the station he held as a child—the sole child of a single mother who struggled financially to provide for her son who never seemed to stop growing.

As a child he was often bullied for being the child of a single parent who struggled to raise him, who had been left without his alpha father. His mother was loving and kind, she had struggled to provide for her growing boy, but she had never made him feel unloved. Even as he was bullied for his size and his social anxiety, he had never come to the belief that his mother ever regretted not pursuing his father for more support. His mother, a beautiful and kindhearted omega, knew that she could do it on her own.

The life he had lived as a socially awkward alpha who was always too big and too poor to make many friends had driven him to joining the military. He had volunteered for the military service when he was 17, first pursuing a career as a sniper. Due to his size, both height and his muscle mass as a big alpha, he was denied the position but had instead been assigned as an insertion specialist. He was a battering ram, a beast that could be sent forward to break down doors and barriers.

He had worked his way up the ranks before he had ultimately left and joined a private military company, proving to KorTac that he was a capable and deadly solider. His years for the PMC had eventually landed him a role as colonel, a promotion that had proven viable and well received due to his skills on and off the battlefield.

König had dedicated his life to being a soldier, to providing and giving back to his mother who had sacrificed so much for him. His career gave him a very healthy income, and with his it he was able to secure his mother financially, allowing her to stop working. It was his goal to provide for his mother and give her a life of comfort that she hadn’t been able to obtain when he was younger.

His mother had often told him that he was a good alpha, and she often wished he would find an omega to settle down with. Not that his mother would want him to walk completely away from being a soldier, however she knew her son. She had known that König had been objectively closed off with omega’s and hadn’t yet desired to find one to mark. Or perhaps it was that he hadn’t found the right one he was willing to sink his teeth into.

He had slept with omega’s, he had been a relief to a few omega’s during their heats, and they had relieved him during his ruts. But to find an omega whose scent had called to him with such a driving force that it made him want a slice of domesticity, that was another problem entirely.

Or it had been.

Until he felt the hands of fate forcibly driving him to that cafe in Austria. Until he entered that little, small village favourite where a pregnant omega sat, he had never once felt that potential bond. But you, sitting there feeling like you were going to breakdown while carrying a baby in your belly, König had never felt such hunger before.

It wasn’t even lust. No, it was something else entirely. Your scent made him hungry for a life he never thought he would have, a life where he could be a father and husband, a life where his sweet omega would be secure and safe. Safe to raise children, or safe to work just because they wanted to and not because they needed to.

It was fate giving him a jolt of electricity that sparked throughout his entire body, the neurons in his brain firing off rapidly as a lifetime of possibilities had shot off in his brain. It was clear, that fate had wanted him to be there in that moment, to meet you and offer you the help you desired.

And then he went to your inherited cabin for the first time. He had seen the state of your tiredness, the bed you made in front of the fireplace because you were too tired to drag yourself to bed. He had been well aware of your situation, alpha-less and pregnant, alone to care for yourself after that bastard left you alone. The rumours around the village were telling, and it had only reiterated König’s belief that fate had a heavy hand at play.

He would take care of you. It was decided, already cemented in his brain that you needed him. His mother would have surely kicked his ass if she knew that his neighbour was a little pregnant thing and he hadn’t offered to help. He knew that his mother would be disappointed in him, and it drove him to offer hlep—and then extend that help to fix up that cabin of yours. König was close enough, there were no excuses for him not to help you.

No, in that moment he had decided he would help you. Whether you had wanted his help or not, you clearly needed it.

It was all that was on his mind as he rested against the edge of his perch. The target was eliminated, the operation he was on would come to an end and he would get to go home. He informed you before he left that he would be gone for weeks but once he had come back he would help you fix things.

“Extraktion in fünf.” The voice that echoed in his ear through his comms had briefly drawn him back to focus instead of the continuous thought processes in his mind.

Extraction in five. Five minutes and he would be on a heli back to base, and from base he would debrief. But by tomorrow morning he would be well on his way back to that cabin where he would trade fatigues for a hammer and nail—set on fixing those front steps of yours so you wouldn’t trip and break an ankle.

König had rested the butt of the gun against his shoulder as he waited, feeling the weight against him, a grounding sensation that kept his focus from shifting back to you.

**************************************

You hadn’t seen the austrian giant in weeks. You were aware that he would be gone for his job, which you quickly learned was a soldier for a private military company through the talks in that small village. The official rank you’d learned was colonel, although that was where the details had stopped though it was through no fault of the residents of that village.

His rank was known and so was the fact that he worked for a private military company, but which company was kept private and so were any kind of details about what he had done. It was clear that people knew he was a long-standing soldier of a rather impressive rank yet no one would ask any other questions.

In the weeks he was gone you had been back to the village a handful of times to cross off minor errands that were on a growing list of things to do. You had returned to the hardware store to cancel the repair services, trying to speak in broken German instead of English, to convey that the problem had been taken care of. Although the problem with your furnace was handled, you still had other things in your cabin that needed to be handled.

There were a few rooms that would need to be painted since the old paint seemed to be aging poorly, peeling in some places and faded in others, and your choices were somewhat limited. Still, you had chosen from what options were there and scheduled a delivery with the owner’s wife for the paint and a few other supplies.

With your delivery of supplies scheduled and your other task of grocery shopping completed, you had returned back to the cabin with the trunk of your vehicle full of groceries. The drive was quiet, your mind restless as it went through the motions of calculating the changes you were about to go through and the aftermath of your ex-alpha's rejection. Though he hadn’t wanted anything to do with your baby, there was a sliver of disappointment over his rejection. As if you were hopeful that he would come back and want to do the right thing, regardless of him throwing the tests back in your face.

As you parked your vehicle and cut the engine, you remained in the driver’s seat with your hands on the wheel. Your hands tightened around the smooth material; your gaze unfocused as you looked in the general direction of the cabin’s front door. The steps were still in need of repairs, there were still rickety and roughened, and according to König who had fixed your furnace, acted as a potential danger. He was under the impression that you would somehow manage to trip and break your leg on the rotting wood.

König, that Austrian giant, had been oddly on your mind lately. In the last few weeks, you had occasionally thought of him and the intrusion he had made on your life. Not that his presence in your cabin and insistence on fixing your furnace was a bad thing.

On the contrary, he had helped you and saved you a lot of money by fixing it for you instead of you hiring the repair services. Not only had he helped you fix the furnace, but he then denied you paying him or at least giving him something in exchange for fixing it.

He was puzzling, the whole situation was oddly mystifying. You had pondered it, the whole relationship until you heard a gentle knock on the window of your vehicle. The sound had startled you enough to jump, for your scent to reflect your brief fear that had quickly shifted to surprise.

You pulled the keys from the engine and slipped them into your pocket, grabbing your bag. König had stepped out of the way, allowing you to not just open the door but get out. You stood beside the driver’s side door after you shut it with a soft snap.

Once you were standing almost face to face with König, you dug your heels into the slightly stiff ground. You were silent, watching him just as he was watching you, though his gaze was far more studious.

“Your baby bump looks bigger,” he observed with just a slight twitch to the corner of his lips, “how far along are you now?”

“4 months now,” you answered his question and moved around to the back of your vehicle, popping the trunk in order to start packing your groceries in, “I didn’t realize you were back.”

He’d been gone for weeks, and your pregnancy had progressed from the 3rd month to the 4th month. Though you hadn’t noticed a change in your baby bump clearly there was one, as König had observed. You made the summation that König was an observant alpha, not just because he was a soldier but rather that he was naturally astute.

“I’ll carry those.” He reached in and around you, grabbing the bags of groceries you’d just brought from town. He managed to do what you hadn’t, carrying them all in one hand or on one arm, allowing you to grab the rest of your supplies.

“You don’t have to do this.” You stated, watching him as he turned and began walking to your cabin, his heavy footsteps and long stride leaving you behind. You quickly slammed the trunk down and wished until it latched before you scrambled to follow him.

“You’re pregnant, you should be taking it easy.” He opened the door for you, holding it open for you to pass under his arm. “I brought dry wood for your furnace, and tools to fix the stairs.”

You slipped under his arm and entered your cabin, setting the other supplies you had down in the floor. He was standing there with the door still opened, and you could see the off roading vehicle he used parked off to the side of the cabin. There was a small utility trailer pulled behind that was stacked with wood, and on top of the pile was a worn black toolbox.

“I’m only 4 months-“

“4 months or 8 month makes no difference.” He huffed, his eyes zeroing in on your baby bump as his hands flexed by his side. “You will stay inside and rest, I will put away the wood and fix the stairs.”

He said in such a manner of fact, as if it wasn’t a suggestion and more of an order. However his tone wasn’t forceful, it was firm yet carried with it an air of genuine concern. To his demand, soft as it was, you had kept your protests buried deep within yourself.

You had wanted to argue, you had wanted to negate his concerns and tell him you didn’t need his help. Every protest you might have aired was silenced by his promised acts that he was in the middle of completing.

And it felt good. It felt so good to have someone care for you, to have an alpha who wanted to do small acts for you without needing to be asked. It was just another reminder that there was a difference between the alpha that left you behind and the alpha standing in front of you.

“Can I…get you anything then? Food, water, tea..?” You wanted to do something in exchange, and if he wouldn’t allow you to pay him than you’d have to come up with something else.

His blue eyes swept over you again, his lips pressed into a firm line. His scent was not  oddly calming to you but it had simultaneously made your heart skip a beat. Not that you would want to admit it, not that you would ever acknowledge the feeling.

“Dinner,” König had finally spoken, another soft alpha command that had settled far too easily into your hindbrain, “after I am finished, we will have dinner.”

And once again, you found yourself unable to deny him.

Chapter Text

The hours after he had finished working around your cabin were filled with slight awkwardness that pooled between you. König had placated the lack of a desire to go out that night for dinner, after he had finished helping you, by offering a compromise. He would head into the village and pick up something for you to eat, and you wouldn’t have to trudge through the village.  

Just over an hour had passed since König had left to go get dinner for the two of you, and upon his return it was clear that he had brought extras. Not only had the strong and imposing alpha bought dinner for the two of you but he had made sure to stop at a grocery store. Loaded into his arms were bags of supplies you might have needed, or things he thought would be best suited for you here by yourself.  

“That’s more than dinner,” you commented on the additional pitstop he had made, as your hands grasp at the perfect and undented canned goods, “you brought groceries too?”  

“Austrian winters can be harsh,” König relayed an explanation as he moved from the front entrance of your cabin to the fireplace, immediately setting himself upon the task of starting one, “and I don’t think it would be wise for a pregnant omega to go trekking through the snow because she ran out of food.”  

The appearance of his strong back had briefly and cathartically drawn your attention away from the canned vegetables in your hands. Your eyes were drawn toward the imposing alpha who, you imagined, would be predatory to anyone who would have threatened someone he cared for. And you also imagined that if König had lived tens of thousands of years ago, he would be an apex predator on the merit of his size. He would be a man who could have anyone or anything he wanted based off the sheer strength and capabilities he had.  

“You are staring.” He called out from his place in front of the fireplace, though he hadn’t turned his head to look at you. Instead, he called you out where you were, in the kitchen putting away groceries that he had bought for you just because he though you needed them,  

“How did you know?” You tore your eyes away from him and turned, feeling flustered by being called out like you had. You had started putting away the canned goods and other groceries he had bought for you, your hands shoving the cans into the cupboard with more force than you should have.  

König hadn’t answered immediately. Instead of answering you he had focused on making and building the fire, the sound of small sparks and crackles of flames eating at wood the only sound between you and him. There was the creak of the door to the fireplace as he shut and secured it and then adjusted the damper. Soon enough you'd could hear the shift of his feet on the floorboards, and as you looked over your shoulder you took notice of the fire burning. It was a healthy flame that was lapping at the seasoned and dries wood in the fireplace, producing a steady heat that would soon radiate in the living room.  

“Do you have allergies?” König had asked of you, ignoring the question you posed for him first. “Or any dietary restrictions?”  

You finished putting the supplies he had brought away, and then you turned your back to the cupboards. You leaned back against the edge, feeling his blue eyes and poignant stare fixated on the softness of your baby belly. You were 4 months along now and there was a curve that was starting to become more noticeable, the softness of your belly would soon grow and become nearly impossible to hide.  

“I don’t have allergies, sometimes milk can bother me.” You answer honestly because what do you have to hide from him, and he’s given you no reason to think he was going to off you and grind your bones into dust.  

“Good.” König was done with the fire, you were done putting supplies away, and after you both were finished, he had motioned toward the dinner table. There was a selection of food set out, both traditionally Austrian and more modern and ethnic dishes that were set out in takeout boxes. As you approached the table and leaned over to see what was there, König had been watching you carefully, studying you as if you were some newly hatched bird that was going to take flight for the first time.  

“You take prenatal vitamins?” His next question had arrived at the exact time that you'd sat at the table, your fingers trailing across one of the cracks, now sealed, in the wood. His questions weren’t anything invasive or intrusive, they were standard questions your doctor would ask you. But with König asking, there was more intent behind his voice as if he was more emotionally invested in this pregnancy than even your doctor would be.  

“Prenatal vitamins, folic acid and calcium.” You answered his question while your eyes were following his movements, from the dining table to the fireplace to check on it, and back again. Once he had sat across from you, he had grabbed a few of the takeout containers and lined them up for you.  

“You need to drink water-”  

“I do drink water.” You countered, sitting across the table from him as he pushed food containers toward you with a controlled and strategic manner.  

“Not enough water.” He raised his head and looked you over, studying you in an overanalytical yet curious way, his blue eyes pinning you to the chair you were on. You were frozen, watching and waiting for him to say something else. “You need 8-10 cups of water a day.”  

“How do you know?” You lifted one of the lids on the takeout container, the spices from the even mix of meat and vegetables made your stomach growl with an uncourteous sound.  

“I just do.” His answer was final, his reply short and somewhat curt, had been the final word on that conversation before he sat across from you. When he was sat, he used the prongs of a fork to yank a container toward himself, the choice he made just like yours.  

“Okay, I'm sorry but this is way too much food.” You started a new topic after a few minutes of silence, observing the takeout containers that had been laid out on the table. “How-”  

“They are prepared meals you can rewarm.” König spoke clinically, again, like pure logic and sense dictated that he had to bring you so much food, so you could survive. As if there wasn’t any other means for you to cook.  

“I do have a working stove-” König scoffed at your words, a derivative sound that made you rest your fork against the side of the container. “-what was that sound?”  

“The oven had cracked elements inside that are dangerous. You will stop using it until it’s replaced.” König tilted his head slightly, his eyes shifting past you to the aforementioned appliance that sits tucked between cupboards. “Eventually it will cause a fire.”  

“You’re very demanding, you know that?” You pick up your fork again and make a show of stabbing the prongs into a piece of meat with more force than necessary. You expect König to say something else, to try and negate your statement that he was a demanding alpha.  

Instead, he stared at you, openly stared at you, as he waited for you to continue. His blue eyes were slightly crinkled at the corners, a slight narrow in your direction while his lips were pressed into a firm, line. There was a vein of awkward silence that passed between you once more, where König was waiting for you and you were waiting for him.  

“I don’t know what you want.” You finally relented and cracked, ending the silence with a furrow of your brows and your own frown.  

“I am waiting for you to make your point. You said I was demanding. Und ?”  

“Und....” Your voice trailed off as you autonomously continued chewing and eating, working your way through the food he had brought you. “You’re demanding, what’s up with that?”  

“Und you are quite reckless for a pregnant omega.” König had rebutted your statement and question with his own, one that hadn’t left room for argument.  

It was, again, just a fact.  

“I am not reckless, regardless of being pregnant. I can still do things on my own, I’m not useless.” You stabbed your fork into vegetables, the force you used conducive to your annoyance for the alpha and soldier sitting across from you.  

“Ja, not useless.” König disagreed but not with enough emphasis to really make you believe wholeheartedly that he would allow you to fix more things in your cabin without his help.  

“And the stove is fine, there’s nothing wrong with it!” Your voice raised in volume and pitch, your argument against his claim was inherently coming off as more defensive than it should have been. Maybe it was because he had already done so much for you by fixing the wood furnace, and the stairs that were rotting away were now perfect and sturdy.  

Or maybe it was because you didn’t know how you were going to manage getting a new stove as well as all the baby items you had to start gathering. Yes you were only 4 months pregnant, but that meant there were only 5 months left. You had 5 months to get everything you would need for your baby’s arrival like a crib, diapers, clothes, bottles, a car seat, stroller, a baby monitor.  

“Nein,” König spoke with that same air of finality and natural command, “it’s not fine. It is wrecked, and you need a new stove.”  

“I can’t-”  

“I will handle it, natürlich .” He gave a single nod of his head in your direction with the understanding that it would be handled, and it would be handled by him. “Eat your food before it gets cold.”  

“And the rest of it?” You countered, eyeing the takeout boxes and containers that would provide you with at least two days of full meals. “Will you at least take some home with you? I’m sure you could use some.”  

“Nein.” Another denial, and another natural answer from a strong alpha like himself.  

Once again you were both thrust into the kind of awkward silence that hung in the air. There were things you wanted to ask him, mostly about his work as a soldier and why he was so driven to be here for you.  

Sure, you had gotten a basest and very basic answer that his mutter would kill him if he left a pregnant omega to fend for herself, but it felt more than that. It felt as if there was more of a laundry list of reasons why he could be doing this, trying to insert himself into your life and fix the problems that could be easily remedied by tools and a strong hand.  

Almost worse was your desire to almost, almost, let it happen without qualms. Your ex-alpha wasn’t coming back, he wasn’t going to want to do anything for you or the baby, and being taken care of felt nice. Albeit a little awkward considering you hardly knew anything about the other person and now you were having dinner, but it still felt good.  

“Can I ask-”  

“Nein.” König cut you off before you could even start the process of your question, speaking over you with a firm, not rude or deliberately cold, manner. “I know what you are going to ask und nein.”  

“-you’re a soldier for a private military right?” Your question, and the way you pressed on, had drawn his attention from his food, and centered it entirely on you.  

His stare was poignant, it was unflinching. You had learned that German’s and Austrian’s liked to stare. It hadn’t meant anything like it had in the States, rather it was almost another form of communication in itself. Silent stares that spoke volumes, that communicated more than a thousand words.  

“I googled KorTac,” now you had felt a little bashful, having to admit that one of the insignia’s on his jacket had led you to the private military though you hadn’t gotten far into your search, “what is your title?”  

“Title?” He finally drew his eyes away from you, to finish the food in one takeout container before setting it aside.  

“Title’s not the right word. What’s your...” Had you already learned of what kind of soldier he was? You couldn’t remember if you had or not, if you’d remembered learning what his station was.  

“ Rang? Ihr wundert euch über meinen Rang, ja ?” König set his fork down just long enough to gather and stack containers that he would place in the fridge for you, and then he pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m a Colonel.”  

Again, he spoke so matter of factually. There was a glimmer of pride in his words, arrogance and cockiness that he had so easily carried with him due to his size and strength. Yet his response was so complicated because yes, he was proud of his rank, but it was also spoken as a simple truth: he was a colonel and had earned it.  

“So...have you ever been shot?” You ask while he’s standing at the fridge, his hand curled around the top of the door while he bends at an uncomfortable angle due to his size. “I mean you obviously would have been because you’re a colonel but have you-”  

“You should not be asking these questions.” König put the food away and then stood up, closing the refrigerator door behind him. Once it was shut properly, he had crossed his arms over his chest while his chin was tucked slightly to his chest.  

“Your front door doesn’t close properly, the stove needs to be replaced, and your bathroom-”  

“The front door? Oh yeah, it doesn’t always latch, I’m not worried about it.” Your blase attitude about the door had drawn another glimmer of irritation from König. His jaw tensed and his eyebrows furrowed, and you knew, just knew, you were going to get another scolding.  

“The door doesn't latch properly, and you think it is something not to worry about? You will let cold air in, moisture will settle between the door and the frame, it will rot. And your bathroom taps leak, wasting water. You need it fixed.” He had huffed, his eyes rolling at your insistence that everything was fine.  

“König really, you’ve done enough-”  

“Nein, you need it fixed. I will handle it, ja?” He had nodded his head, expecting you to comply.  

You rolled your eyes at the towering alpha, the commanding and demanding colonel that insisted on fixing every little problem that you didn’t think was that big of a deal.  

“You roll your eyes now, but when the frame is rotting and moist, will you be laughing then?” König and his strict no-nonsense voice, his manner of speaking, had made you laugh under your breath as it was, admittedly, funny to see such an imposing alpha fretting over an omega like yourself.  

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll go into the village tomorrow and I’ll go look for a stove. And I can hire someone-” You were going to relent, because it was easier just to agree than argue.  

And you enjoyed being taken care of like this, even if you wouldn’t dare confess the truth.  

“I’ll go with you. You need the help, and your German is terrible.” He started to gather his things, carting them off toward the door as he once again planned to help you without you asking.  

“But I don’t speak German...?” You followed him toward the aforementioned door that didn’t shut right, standing there with your arms crossed while he slipped his boots on again.  

“ Genau .” He reached behind his back and grabbed the door handle, turning the knob and giving it a sharp tug to open it. “I’ll be here tomorrow at 9am.”  

“9 am?” Your voice betrayed you, and your arms fell to your sides.  

“The early bird gets the worm, is that not how the saying goes?” He had already stepped halfway out, his eyes trailing across the threshold and the frame of the door. “This door needs to be fixed, tomorrow I’ll buy what I need to fix it.”  

“Okay...?” You stepped out after him as he slipped his jacket on and began moving toward his side by side, pausing to check that the transport trailer was properly hitched. “Well...thank you for dinner and thank for fixing my stairs.”  

“ Bitte .” He stood upright, his back rigid and tall, his eyes caste back toward you. “Tomorrow at 9am, don’t forget.”  

“I won’t.” You waited until he started the side by side and then you stepped back inside the cabin but hadn’t shut the door yet.  

“Und close the door as tightly as you can!” His voice was heard over the rumble of his vehicle’s engine, a final command before you shut the door.  

Chapter Text

König had raised his hand to knock on the front door of your cabin, only pausing the action of rapping his knuckles against the wood to observe the small gaps between the door and the frame. It was an easy solution, something that would only take little bits of wood to fix as well as some foam weatherstripping or even foam seal tape. Once had gotten the front door fixed, König would have to replace the doorknob with something stronger and more secure—of course then there was the matter of the bathroom. 

Regardless of the list of things he was going to fix for you, it had all taken a temporary backseat when König had glanced at the face of his watch. He finally rapped his knuckles against the door with enough force for you to able to hear his arrival from the bottom floor, and then he stepped back and waited. 

There was, admittedly, other things that he could have bene doing with his time away from the KorTac base. There were always preparations for winter that needed to be handled, and it was always a probability to go visit his mother. And yet the buzzing and lingering thought of leaving the area while this omega was so haphazardly unaware or blase about things that could be done here, had his hesitating. You were alone, and pregnant omega without an alpha to care for you, no alpha to make sure you and the baby were safe. 

There was also the question of why König cared so much and truthfully there were multiple reasons that could be argued as the main reason for his concern. Of course, knowing that his mother would be wholly disappointed with König was one of the reasons why he cared. The others were settling somewhere between being your closest neighbour and feeling responsible for you. 

And the most blaring reason that he was refusing to acknowledge at this point in time, was the glaring fact that he felt connected to you. König was a man who had experienced and had a number of omega’s in his company, and yet he had never felt so compelled and connected to one like you. It was your scent, it was your vulnerability and simultaneous strength that had called to him, made him want to keep you safely tucked away as if you were his own omega. 

His mother had once said that König was made to be a mate, that he would be a good father irregardless of his upbringing with a degenerate father. König would be good, his mother reassured him that he would be better than most alphas in these modern times. 

“Fraulein!” König raised his voice and knocked again when the time had slipped past, and he had chosen to call out to you and knock again at 9:04. “We were supposed to meet at 9!” 

König was going to raise his hand again and knock when the door shuddered open, not moving smoothly like the day before but jarringly against the floor. You appeared on the other side with a flustered expression on your face and a kind of irritation as you kicked the door open with your foot. Between the previous night and this morning, the door had seemed to be set off kilter and slightly skewed enough to be hard to open. 

“Sorry, I was messing with the door-” 

“What are you wearing? Where is your coat?” König would deal with the door later, as well as his suspicion that you tried to fix it after he had left and instead focused on your appearance. Or rather, the lack of a coat and your choice to simply wear a sweater and a pair of jeans. 

“A sweater? Why, what’s-” Your question drew his eyebrows together in a furrow and his lips had become pursed as he looked you over, taking stock of your inability to contend with any kind of harsh weather that could be rolling in. 

“No jacket? No scarf? No hat upon your head?” König scolded you like he was scolded as a child, his thick and veiny arms crossing over his chest as he stared at you expectantly. “You need a jacket.” 

“it’s not supposed to be that cold, is it?” You slipped your phone out of your pocket to look at the weather, your attention fixated on your screen before you lowered it once more. “It might rain later but right now it’s clear. We can go-” 

“Nein.” König stepped in front of you, blocking you from leaving the cabin with an unwavering solid mass to stop you. “There is no bad weather, only bad planning. Grab a coat.” 

“You’re demanding.” You scoffed and rolled your eyes at him, calling him overbearing under your breath was nothing new to König. Still, he was pleased to see you grabbing a coat, even if it wasn’t as thick as he thought you should have worn. 

“Have you eaten today?” He watches you moving toward the closet near the door, rifling around to find a jacket that wouldn’t draw any more neutral criticism from him. 

“I had a little.” You slipped your jacket on and in the entrance to your cabin you did a small spin for approval before you were allowed to slip past him. As you began walking down the stairs, König had reached behind you to yank the door shut with force that kept it sealed well enough—but as he glanced back at it, he knew there was more to be done than he thought. 

“I have breakfast for you; I made it with your dietary restrictions in mind.” König had followed you close behind, toward his vehicle. You had stopped by the passenger door and looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed and a slight frown to your lips. 

“You brought me breakfast, really?” You were surprised by his admission, turning your head to look back at the alpha with his towering height and devastatingly physical appearance. “My dietary restrictions?” 

“No milk,” König explained as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if it had been permanently cemented in your mind, “no raw eggs, no raw sprouts, no fish high in mercury, no excessive sugar-” 

“König how do you know all this?” You were surprised, extensively caught off guard by the knowledge of foods to avoid in pregnancy. “Did you google it?” 

You stopped by the passenger door and pulled on the handle, propping the door open. As you poked your head into the vehicle you had seen the extent of the breakfast he had brought for you. Cooked and seasoned eggs sitting on two pieces of whole grain bread, a variety of fruit that was cut and prepared into a packaged container, crackers if you were still dealing with morning sickness. 

“There is a lot of risks for a baby that need to be considered.” He hadn’t acknowledged your claim that he did research, he had glossed right over your accusation and moved onto something adjacent. “Will that be enough or will you need more?” 

“More?” You looked at him from the passenger side door, still leaning into the vehicle with your hands resting on the metal for balance. “König this is already a lot.” 

“You need lots of nutrients to grow a child, schatz.” He grunted in response to you and lifted the containers of your breakfast in order for you to sit down. As you had sat, he continued to hold the food for you until you were buckled and the door was shut, and only then had he set it down in your lap. 

“You know there are mated alpha’s who do less than you.” You quipped with an air of sarcasm clinging to the edge of your words as you popped the top off the first container, the bread, and eggs still warm. 

He doesn’t verbally comment on your claim but there are subtle signs that he not only heard what you had said but has his own ideas on the failings of these kinds of alpha’s. The ones who put in the bare minimum and expect the complete and unfailing adoration of their mates. You can see it in the way his knuckles grip the steering wheel a little tighter, and the tension in his jaw that brings your attention to the sharpness of his features—to the scars that are faded on his skin yet still a testament to his years of being a soldier. 

“I made you something,” you close the lid on the food and set it aside, just for now, and then you reach between your feet and grab your bag. You rifle through the contents until you remove the object you were searching for. Your fingers curl against the yarn you had used, and you pull it out from your bag and then drop your bag back down to the floor of the vehicle. 

“You made me something, fräulein?” 

“I want to thank you for helping me fix things in my cabin, even if I didn’t ask. “You set the handknit hat on your right thigh and run your fingers along the material. “And I thought about making you dinner or something, but you won’t let me use my stove because the elements are cracked-” 

“Was ist es?” König draws his attention away from the road for a single moment, glancing at you and the knit creation sitting on your thigh before he glances back at the road. “Something I wear?” 

“It’s a hat for winter. I made it after I first moved into the cabin, I got bored at nights and I wanted to ease my mind. You know, make me believe that this wasn’t a total mistake.” You lift your creation from your thigh and set it on the console in between you two, setting it down gently. 

König glances at it again, giving himself more time to analyze it. As he does, you look it over as well, wondering if you had somehow made a mistake. You thought he would like the colours, a mix of deep blue with shades and white and grey, the colours matching well together. The knit winter hat was simple, nothing remotely complex or fancified yet you were proud of it, at least you were at first but now... 

“Danke.” König lifted the hat from the console and turned it over in his hands, becoming admittedly distracted by your creation, even going as far as to lift the material to his nose to inhale your scent that was clinging to the knit. “Smells like you.” 

“I’m sorry about that, I had-” 

“Nein,” he set it down again on the console, returning it to its place before he turned his gaze back again, focusing on the drive towards the village, “don’t apologize. Your scent is...nice.” 

It was a compliment from an alpha who had momentarily taken a different direction with his tone of voice and the firmness of his attitude. This act was a softening of sorts, briefly making him appear vulnerable for a moment as he had pursed his lips and became transfixed by the road ahead of him. His jaw had tensed again, his fingers tightened on the steering wheel, but he remained silent after speaking, rendering the vehicle still. 

“König, I...” 

He turned to look at you, that kind of rigidness returning to take place. He studied you with those blue eyes, light and beautiful as they were, analyzing you from head to toe before he reached toward the temperature controls and turned the heat up for you. 

“Eat, the baby needs food.” He spoke gruffly with another demand, another act that was caring in his own stoic way, expecting you to listen and do what was best for your baby. “You are drinking water?” 

“You made me tea?” You ignored his question and reached for the insulated cup sitting in the cupholder, bringing the lid toward your lips. 

“Blow on it, it might be hot.” There was little time left to get to the village, the drive itself had only taken about half an hour on a good day, and you knew that he would make you wait until you ate before he would allow you to get out of the vehicle. 

“Thank you for breakfast.” You complied to his demand, lifting the lid off the containers in order to reach for one of the whole grain pieces of bread with the egg on top. “I did have a little to eat.” 

“You should have an alpha taking care of you, such a bastard to leave you alone while you are with child. That is something that should be shared between mates, a gift that needs to be celebrated.” König mumbled under his breath, making the comment that furthered his temporary foul mood, one reflected in the clenching of his teeth. 

“Yeah, well that particular bastard wanted all the fun of lying with an omega but not the responsibility.” You sunk your teeth into the toast and egg, biting off pieces at a time and being sure to chew them slowly. You didn’t want to set off the cataclysmic avalanche of morning sickness, not in König’s vehicle and not after he had brought you food. 

“And why are you questioning me about not having an alpha when you don’t have an omega?” You ate one piece of the toast and eggs before you moved onto the second, taking a break in between to question him. “You seem like a capable alpha and yet you don’t have a mate?” 

“I have had omega’s before, I’m not inexperienced schatz.” He let that nickname slip into conversation again, answering your question in a way that didn’t satisfy you like it should have. 

“But you chose not to mate with one? Not to take one for life?” 

“Have you considered taking an alpha?” He shot back, a low growl hanging on the back of his words as if he may already have an omega in his mind, one he would pursue and you pushing was only irritating him. 

“I thought he was the one, I was willing to settle down with him. I thought this was...” you set the toast down again and swallowed hard, finding your throat tightening uncomfortably. 

“He is not worthy of an omega like you, that bastard was willing to leave you and your child. Verdammtes Arschloch.” König’s voice took a sharp and deep edge, the animosity for an alpha he had never met was intense and hateful, riddled with the promise of something violent geared toward the alpha that left you—if he ever had the chance to see him. 

“Arschloch is right.” You didn’t deny his claim, you knew it was a spot-on analysis however it didn’t change the fact that you were alone, that you were going to be raising this baby on your own. “But maybe I’m not mean to have an alpha, maybe I'm meant-” 

“Nein.” He denied you instantly, didn’t even allow you to finish what you were saying. “You deserve a mate, an alpha who will protect you and your child.” 

“Few men would be lining up to court a single omega with a baby on the way. How would I even find someone like that?” Your question hung in the air at the same opportune time as König had driven into the village and found a spot outside the general and hardware store. He put the vehicle into park yet didn’t kill the engine; he allowed it to run to keep you warm. 

He looked you over, running his gaze across your features and down your body until settling on your baby bump. He reached out his hand, waiting until you had given him some kind of visual or physical acceptance of him touching your bump. Once he had been given permission, König settled his hand upon your stomach, feeling the bump beneath his hand, his fingers spread wide. 

He didn’t say anything and neither did you, not until you felt warmth in your belly that spread underneath your skin. It was the kind of radiating heat that made your entire body feel pleasant, safe, and protected like he had said a good alpha should make an omega feel. It was surreal, it was a sensation that you had never felt before, not like this and not with such a potency that made your heart race. 

It made your body feel settled, your mind at ease. 

“You will find someone who will take care of you, someone who will shield you from all the Scheiße in the world.” His voice returns to that softness, that airiness that makes you question whether König is speaking of himself or to himself.  

For your sake, you earnestly hoped he was speaking of himself.  

Chapter Text

The fur flying, one eared orange cat that had bristled by you when you first arrived had certainly struck again. König had no sooner parked his vehicle near the curb of that multipurpose hardware store when the cat appeared. And it was no sooner that you had unbuckled and stepped out of the vehicle when it bristled by you again.

“Hello again,” you greet the cat with a small glimmer of fondness while you shut the car door and stepped toward the creature, “you must like exploring.”

“Don’t touch the thing, Kleine Maus.” König commented from the driver’s side door, not sharing in your fondness of the animal that was trying to toy with your empathy.

It sat by the front door and swished its tail lazily against the concrete sidewalk, meowing pathetically to be let into the store. It was beckoning you to do its bidding, to take pity on it while it sat there making noise. The sound of the small animal had certainly struck something within you that made your heart want to melt for the little creature, regardless of the burly alpha that clearly hadn’t approved.

“It’s a cat, how harmful could it be?” You negated to listen to the alpha and instead and encroached upon the animal, crouching in order to pet its soft fur and scratch its remaining ear.

Your fingers traced along the patterns on his head, the stripes that had been so synonymous with tabby cats. The softness of your touch had made the little cat purr and begin to turn into your touch, seeking more of the affection you were offering him.

This cat had given you the first greeting when you arrived in the village, and again when you came back. You hadn’t quite pitied the poor thing because it was clearly cared for by the owners of the hardware store, even if it had a missing ear. There was nothing to suggest the animal was nefarious or had any resemblance to a threat, like König was implying with his tone.

“Rabies, fleas, other things that can make you sick.” He spoke again, reasoning with you as if it were all common knowledge that you should be aware of. “Leave it alone.”

“God, you’re so bossy.” You stand up and look over your shoulder, rolling your eyes at the giant alpha.

König was busy locking the vehicle, and had reached into his pocket to grab an extensive list of things you would need. When you called him bossy, when you accused him of being uptight in few words, he didn’t deny it.

“Ja.” He spoke a single word before he began walking around the front of the vehicle to step onto the sidewalk. He had watched the cat with suspicion, as if it really was a threat, regardless of the one eared orange tabby rubbing against your legs. “Geh, geh.” 

“König, leave the poor cat alone.” Your contradiction to his desire was unleashed when you had given the cat another pet and stepped toward the door.

With the intention of today’s trip being singularly attached to getting things König said you would need, you had expected that he would view today as a mission. Not that you were well aware of what kind of things a colonel for a private military did, but you could surmise that every deployment or action was calculated and well-thought-out.

“Here, let me help you.” You spoke to the cat who was sitting at your feet, still rubbing its head against your leg. 

You braced your hand against the door and gave it a sharp tug, allowing the cat to dart past you into the building. Though you had managed to open the door for the cat, König would not let you hold the door open.

Instead, his hand had settled above yours, and he pulled the door open for you, using his free hand to nudge you inside. With minimal space between the two of you, you were yet again reminded of the sheer size of him, or the strength that he carried in his body and the imposing height that made you feel like a sprite or a pixie.

Whenever you were near him, you understood, almost direly so, why the role of colonel was so fitting for an alpha like him.

Even without having to see him in any action, you knew he was a soldier through and through—just as you knew that König being an alpha was so natural. 

“Thank you,” you turned and smiled at him, brighter than possibly necessary, and had received a nod in return, an acknowledgement of his actions.

Though he hadn’t verbalized a response, that nod of his head was incredibly telling and such a natural reaction for someone who was inevitably stoic as he was.

Upon entering the hardware store, the cat that had darted past you had jumped onto the long wooden counter that the register was sitting on. That orange tabby with one ear had slowly strewn on top the surface, acting like the store’s personal greeter, meowing softly.

With König behind you, you further entered the store until the door had shut with a soft thud, sealing out the rising chill from the shifting seasons.

“You like that spot.” You commented on the cat’s position as it sat by the register and flicked its tail, it’s one remaining ear twitching at the sound of your voice. “Do you also help keep the mice away?”

You could feel König’s disapproving stare burning into your back, and you didn’t need to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes at your interaction with the cat. There was an apparent and distinctive dislike for the animal though you hadn’t understood why he was so against it.

It hadn’t done anything remotely close to being an irritant like König had unwittingly suggested. The cat was cute, a little maimed, but still carried an adorable quality that made you want to love up on him.

“Stove, schatzchen.” König reminded you and used a hand at the small of your back to guide you once again. He steered you away from the front counter and the cat, through the aisles until you had come near the back of the store.

The desk where you had ordered the repairs was directly in front of you, with a few feet between you and the wooden chair set before it. The repairs that you ordered had been swiftly cancelled by König, who had decided that he was capable of fixing it himself, saving you time and money.

However, that first action had seemed to set König onto a path of pure determination to fix everything else in that cabin before winter set in, even without accepting anything remotely close to a monetary thank-you.

“Over here.” König’s tone was direct, and he had steered you away from the services desk at the back of the store, toward the left.

In a separate room, although with a wide and rather hefty opening, was the appliance section that carried a few options but was limited. Unlike heading to a city with numerous various places to shop, this was the best they had and these were your options. There were a few choices of stoves along with other appliances, of which there were only five of each option for you to look at.

Against the far wall of the separate room were the stoves and ovens, a small mix of both electrical and natural gas. Across from the small selection of stoves, separated by an aisle for walking, was a selection of fridges and freezers—limited, of course—followed by only a few dishwashers.

And against the wall parallel to the stoves and ovens, had sat the washers and dryers, along with a few extra parts that were being sold.

It was a basic selection, yet you knew there weren’t countless options for you otherwise, even if you wanted to hold off and try to use the stove as it was, König wouldn’t let you.

“I could still buy an element-“

“Nein.” König cut you off, not letting you finish the thought that was being spoken out loud.

He hadn’t let you try that excuse the night before when you suggested trying to just fix the stove, and he wouldn’t let you try again. In his mind, the stove needed to be replaced entirely because if one element was broken, then who was to say there wasn’t something else internal that would break.

“Okay, well…how about this one?” You had walked past König to a stove, among the cheapest of the options, and started messing with the knobs, trying to turn them and test how they moved.

It was basic and ordinary, something simple that would suit you and the cabin you called home without seeming too bougie or complicated to use. Simple was all you needed for yourself, and eventually, your baby.

“Nein.” He spoke again and trailed after you, his thick and heavy boots clunking against the floor as he followed your footsteps. “The knobs are on the front, und the Kind will touch them when they get older.”

He had brushed his hands against yours and led you, escorted you really, toward the few options toward the end of the row of options. Among the options that he was willing to contend with, König had seemingly upon one that he would approve of.

A stove with the temperature knobs set on the back panel of the stove, with the screen settled between. It was electric like the stove you had at home, however it was a little bigger and more modern than the aged piece you had been using.

“The baby won’t be able to touch the stove for at least a year and a half after it’s born. And this stove is like twice the price of the other one.” You aired your moderate complaints to König, countering his chosen option by trying to root your argument in the price difference and the state of your baby not even being born yet.

“Don’t be ridiculously dramatic, schatz. The price is not double.” König shut down the latter half of your argument, drawing your attention to the price tags hanging off the oven door. “The price is moderate and standard. This is what you need.”

“König, I really think that the other one will be just fine.” You tried again, making an attempt to counter his choice with some kind of reasonable call to your original choice.

But if there was only one thing you had picked up about the alpha in the short time you had known him, it was that he was incredibly stubborn. There was no reasoning with an alpha like him who, had ultimately, decided that he knew what he was talking about.

“Nein.” He denied you again and shifted his position to face you more directly, his blue eyes casted down upon you with a slight narrowed edge to the corners. “This one.”

“Oh, and obviously König knows best?” You rest your hands on your hips, fingers drumming against the sides of your jacket, exchanging stare to stare.

“Ja. Offenkundig.” König responded with swift and concise German, giving you no options for any arguing.

He had given you the response you were wholly expecting, and then he had turned smoothly on his heel and began walking out of the separated appliance section toward the main girth of the multipurpose hardware store.

“Okay, well, I have a question for the obtusely stubborn alpha.” You quickly followed him, speed-walking to keep up with him and his large, long strides. “Who is going to pay for these materials? Because like I said before-“

“It’s handled.” He stopped directly in the middle of an aisle with plumbing fixtures and faucets, searching for one that would suit your bathroom.

He was distinct when he had mentioned that your bathroom faucet was leaking and needed to be replaced, and just as determined to fix it yourself. Just like the front door with the weather stripping that needed to be replaced, and the other random things you were sure he would find.

“Handled, you mean…you?” You questioned, coming to stand beside him whilst you looked between him and the faucets in front of you. “König, I can’t really repay you, you know that?”

“Und…?” He had relayed the question that felt more like a statement, and reached for a closed and sealed box.

“Und… I just don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of you because… I don’t know.” You shrugged and created a temporary distraction for yourself by pulling the collar of your jacket tighter.

“Because my ex would never do these things for me, and it seems like there’s a lack of alpha’s in America who would go to these lengths for an omega they’re not even mated to.”

König had turned his head to the left to look at you, really study you as you stood by his side. The faucet was still in his hands, large and long fingers holding the girth of the box that seemed too small in his palms.

There was silence between the two of you, nothing but the sound of the one eared cat’s occasional mewing and the muffled sound of the female store owner working in the back. His blue eyes bore into you, studying you with an intensity that made your heart begin to race and your stomach to twist, almost as if you were experiencing a bout of morning sickness.

But it wasn’t the morning sickness that afflicted you, it was König and his piercing blue eyes and the alpha scent of his that had seemingly settled into your bones.

“Your ex was pathetic.” König’s voice was spewing and deep, rooted and brimming with nothing less than pure disgust.

You don’t expect him to speak with such an angry fervour, or a spiteful dislike for someone he hadn’t even met. And yet, he speaks with it so freely, so untethered in his disapproval of the ex that left you pregnant and alone, that had shrugged off any responsibility for you and your baby—legally severing all ties.

“Any alpha who abandons his mate and his child to be…” he trails off as a dark glimmer affects his blue eyes, and it’s everything he doesn’t say that makes you well aware of how terrifying he could be.

“I can’t pay you back for all of this.” You whisper in the aisle, your voice soft with a slight tremble that had come with the feeling of vulnerability.

You had been given this cabin, inherited it from a distant relative with enough of a monetary sum that could provide for you and your baby, and you could have done all of this yourself, but he wouldn’t let you.

You couldn’t pay him back for what he was doing because he wouldn’t take a monetary reward or repayment. He had denied you once, twice even, and wouldn’t hear any more of it.

“I know.” He had answered back just as quietly, his voice drawing toward the teetering edge of tenderness that seemed almost unfitting for a soldier like himself. “You don’t have to.”

“Then what do you want? Why are you putting in so much effort for an omega you have no obligations to?” You asked the question that begged to be answered, that was on your mind and wouldn’t allow you to settle. “Are you…interest in courting?”

“Ja.” A simple answer, a single word.

König had drawn his hand toward you, his fingers only briefly touching the edge of your jacket. The very tips of his fingers had grazed the edge of your jaw and chin, almost as if he were testing the water of what you would allow.

When you didn’t pull away, when you didn’t flinch or pull away from him, König had pushed further with his affectionate touch. There was something unsaid and unspoken between the two of you.

It was silent, yet it had rendered itself as an understanding.

“I would say yes.” Your answer is too easy to give, and it comes too quickly, too naturally, for you to contain. “I wouldn’t say no.”

“Gut.” König gives you another response, one that fills the space and brings a small, soft smile to your face.

Chapter Text

He was recalled to base earlier than he or you had anticipated, drawn back to the soldiering that had consumed so many of his years. From the age of 18, 17 technically when he had enlisted, König had been dedicated to using his size and brute strength as an alpha for soldiering.

A sniper was what he had truly wished to become when he had enlisted, due to the size of him that ideal wasn’t handed off to him. Not immediately. No, the leaders and commanding officers that he had spent years training under and heading into gunfire with, had given him another role.

As a battering ram and insertion specialist, who used his size and the stocky intimidation he naturally carried to break into the targeted areas. He was, truly without trying, well-adjusted to scare those enemies he chased down.

And it was through his years of dedication and drive in the military that led him to the role he carried now. While there were other soldiers who had taken reprieves to court omega’s and chose to mate, to settle down with, König hadn’t. It couldn’t have been said that he had closed himself off completely to the idea of being a mate and a father to children. It was simply an idealism that he hadn’t felt drawn to with the omega’s he had met—thus far.

He had spent time in omega’s beds, he had certainly experienced the comforts of an omega beneath him. The pleasure of taking an omega and having them submit beneath him was not new to him, it wasn’t as if König had ideals about keeping himself pure. However, there was a difference between taking omega’s to bed and expelling the tension of his ruts, and taking an omega as a mate. There had been, until recently, no one he would have endured to be mated to.

It wasn’t until König had felt an ineradicable pull to enter that café on Main Street that morning. And it wasn’t until König had stumbled upon the sight of a new omega, fresh-faced and completely foreign to the village he had called home, that had sparked a shift. The scent of the omega, that hung delicately in the air, had settled deep into his bones with a striking desire—one that was completely basest and primal in its very core. Even as an immediate reaction to the scent, not even the fact that the omega was pregnant, vulnerable, and crying, König felt more of an instantaneous connection to his omega opposed to any other.

And he was just as quick to realize that this omega sitting in the café crying, pregnant with puffy eyes, was his new neighbour. Not that König had prided himself on being the most active in gossip in the village, there was undeniable and unshakeable knowledge that the new owner of that cabin was foreign.

American.

Just as the knowledge had informed him that the new owner was American, rumours had almost filtered through the natural sieve of the village that this pregnant American, was having trouble with the cabin itself. It was common knowledge that things needed to be repaired, but when you had sought the service to fix your wood stove, König had felt compelled. The compulsory need to fix it himself was the spark, the initial catalyst that sent him down this path.

The offer to help you was rooted in complexities, some stemming from his childhood in which his single omega mother had raised him, and other complexities that stemmed from some natural drive. König knew that his mother would be disappointed that he hadn’t offered to help the single omega who was with child; however, it wasn’t just that disappointment that spurred him on. Perhaps it was some other urgency, some engrained natural desire to care for an omega who needed help. His instincts as an alpha to protect, to provide, to shield a needy omega from danger, not that a broken stove was blatantly dangerous, was driving him to act.

That first meeting had spurred him further, deepened and hastened the desires that he had wholly been immune to. The soldier, the colonel who had only sought omega’s to quell the hunger and burn of ruts, had suddenly felt the same desire as other alphas. The desire to be mated, to have an omega of his own, to have children to return to, young ones who would cling to his legs and call him father.

All of this was obviously meant for the future, but the base desire was there. Suddenly, it wasn’t a prospect he hadn’t imagined for himself—there was the ability to have a future with someone who was not out of reach. 

König knew from the morning he arrived in the cabin to assist you, that there was no alpha around—without even having to ask you about the situation—and there was something unsettling about you being alone. Pregnant, without assistance of a mate, without someone to help you ready your cabin for the arrival of the baby. There was a heaviness that had settled in his chest, like no other before, when he had first witnessed you the morning after offering his help.

You didn’t bother to check who was on the other side of the door, that was unwise. Displeasing.

You slept on the floor because you were unpacking. Reproachable. You were pregnant, pregnancy demanded comfort.

You didn’t have nearly enough dried wood to last you a winter in Austria, not with the predictions of cold weather coming. Your lack of readiness had spurned König’s desire, the natural drive to protect, provide, care for…

You needed help, and König would be damned to let his mother’s disappointment in his lack of action settle into him. He knew his mother would scold him for not helping, for not assisting someone who was new to the area, someone who required help. And whether that was his mother’s unknowing guilt or the connection he felt with this omega, König had acted.

After fixing the furnace and promising to return with wood, König had left for duty. Two weeks had pulled him away from the cabin and the omega who was left to her devices in the Austrian woods, and even while he was in the midst of soldiering, König had thought of you. He had fixed your furnace, yet there was more to be done, and he was going to do it, whether you accepted his help or not, he was going to do what he did best. König was going to use the root of his soldier career as a battering ram and insertion specialist to fix your cabin’s problems.

And he had. Though you had certainly raised some objections to everything he was doing, and in your own stubbornness had questioned him about how much effort he was putting into your wellbeing, you let him. Regardless of you implying that he was a bossy alpha, to which he would not deny, you hadn’t turned him away or tried to curse him out for being there. König was under the suspicion that you liked being cared for, as much as he had unilaterally liked caring for an omega—not someone who was just there to warm his bed or quell his rut, but an omega he could genuinely care for.

There was no going back, he knew that. He was well aware that every act he had helped you with had only spurned him further toward the idea of courtship. Obligations and guilt from his mother had shifted into something far more natural to himself and his own feelings. König had long since only taken omega’s for nights and one time experiences, yet for once, he had wanted more.

It was the inevitable and clawing nature that settled deeply within him. The alpha who had been so uninterested in taking a mate, in securing an omega for life, had finally found one that he wanted. Wholly. Completely. Endlessly.

Now König was back on base, sooner than he had expected and without being given much time for a proper goodbye. How unfair was it that he had just offered to start a courtship, one that you expected, and now he was gone for who knows how long. König had no sooner had you agree that this would be so much more than just neighbours, than he was drawn away back to violence and threats.

Regardless of being pulled away from his omega before being able to properly take you out on a courting date, König had given you the first of many courting gifts. It was something small and delicate, yet it would bring you comfort in the night when you felt along, albeit perhaps it was bold of him. The first of many gifts he would give you was a silver bracelet that would fit nicely around your wrist, with a few diffuser beads that were scented like him—capturing the scent of him as best as possible.

König had given you the bracelet the day he had left, the silver jewelry resting upon a soft bed of velvet. You had graciously accepted the courting gift in the early hours of the morning when he had come to say goodbye, to announce that he would be gone for a while. König had stood on the porch steps he had fixed for you, bearing the gift along with the caring demand for you to stay out of trouble.

And your exchange of “don’t get shot, you won’t be able to boss me around with a bullet wound” had meant more than you had known to König. That statement, from an omega that he would return to, was an unyielding warmth that had stirred a reaction deep in his heart and soul. It felt like, for the first time in his life, there was the glow of something bigger than his role as a colonel. A hopefulness for the future his mother always wanted for him, and the knowledge that he would be better and do better than his own father had.

König would not disappoint his children, he would not abandon the omega that needed him.

As it was, König knew that courtship would not cease just because he wasn’t with you back in Austria. Even from a distance, on the base and even beyond that, König would take care of you how you required and how you deserved. It was in the soft glow of the lamp on his desk that he had arranged deliveries to your cabin, gifts that you wouldn’t expect. While he was sat behind the desk in his office, managing the paperwork that demanded his attention, König had made physical and mental notes to call you in the morning. To greet you after you had a hopeful, restful sleep, would be the start of the day for you, a reminder that even if he was gone for a while, he was still the alpha who would care for you.

When König knew the morning back in Austria had settled into the horizon, he had taken the necessary allotment of time he needed to communicate with the little American back home. Stepping into his office after debriefing the soldiers that he would lead on the mission, König had stepped back into the office with the sole purpose of greeting you.

He sat behind his desk and had already begun contacting you through the phone, his blue eyes staring at his reflection in the screen, waiting for you to accept his video call. It had taken less time than he anticipated for you to answer, something that made König highly pleased, however that pleasure quickly deflated.

“Chocolate, in the morning?” Displeasure dripped from his voice as he had taken in the clear image of you, through the screen, with a piece of dark chocolate tucked between your fingers. “That is not nutritional, schatz.”

There you were, in your cabin, sitting on the couch while he could hear the crackle of the fireplace behind you. You were in perfect view for him, wearing a thick chunky sweater with your hair haphazardly held out of your face. While you looked well rested, which König was pleased by, the choice to have chocolate in the morning was oddly aggravating to the colonel.

“The baby wanted chocolate.” You bit down on the corner of the dark chocolate, the motion drawing his attention away from the sweet treat to the glint of silver on yoru wrist. There it was, his gift that was settled around your wrist with the diffuser bead that garnered his scent while he was away. “And it’s dark chocolate, healthier than milk chocolate-“

“Chocolate is not breakfast. Make yourself something better.” König had leaned in, eyes narrowing as he studied the details in the background of your cabin—notably taking stock of the baby items that were resting on the table behind you.

The delivery he had arranged for your child had undoubtedly arrived in the morning before you woke, on your doorstep, as well as the gifts he had specifically gotten for you. While he was practical in getting supplies for when your baby would arrive, even if he was months too soon, König had indulged for you with courting gifts he thought you would like. Winter flowers set in an unbreakable vase, he didn’t need you creating trouble for yourself, as well as much approved self-care items that would help you relax.

“Even from a thousand miles away, you’re bossy.” You rolled your eyes at him through the screen and shifted on the couch, rising to your feet. You carried the phone with you as you moved, taking him on the trek with you, letting him see what you were doing. Despite your sarcasm or teasing tone, you had listened to the demand and dragged yourself toward the kitchen, overdramatizing your act of opening the fridge to remove a carton of Greek yogurt and eggs.

“Did you take your prenatal vitamins? Did you drink enough water? Are you rested enough?” König had initially grunted in response before he barraged you with questions. All while he watched you, analyzing you and your movements, as you began portioning out yogurt into a bowl before you set a pan on the stove. “Don’t use too much oil-“

“KÖNIG!” You raised your voice and cut him off, your head cocked to the side and your eyes narrowed in contempt toward the camera. “You are acting like a mother hen, honestly.”

“Ich bin keine Mutter Henne.” His voice lowered in tone, a growl tinging on the tail end of his words as he processed your accusation. “I am making sure you are being responsible, mädchen. You need to take care of yourself und the baby.”

You had rolled your eyes again, the sound of the fireplace still crackling in the background. He could hear it all, the sound of you turning the knobs on the stove, of you opening drawers to grab whatever you needed. You had dipped out of camera for a moment before you appeared again, spoon in one hand and your bowl of yogurt in the other.

“You’re off being a soldier, getting shot at, and you’re more concerned for my wellbeing than your own?” You were accusing him with that glimmer of mischief he knew would be trouble for him in the future—enjoyable and much needed trouble—but trouble nonetheless.

“Ja.” He leaned back against the chair he was sitting in and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at you through the camera. “What is your point?”

“Well, I just…” there it was, unspoken words about the care König was giving you while your ex had clearly given you nothing. Yes, you liked to claim that König was a mother hen, and yes, you called him bossy, but he cared.

He cared.

“I am a soldier, I have been a soldier since I was 17. You are a pregnant omega sitting alone in a cabin while your-“ he stops himself and has to clear his throat, catch his breath before he says what is truly on his mind. “— while there is no one there to care for you.”

Verbal silence hangs in the balance. While he can hear the fireplace, the crackle of burning logs and the pops of butter you put into the pan to cook your eggs, you are silent. You watch him through the camera, spoon still in hand, while your bowl of Greek yogurt sits on the counter, a scene that is so domestic in nature it makes him envious.

It makes him wish he was there now, basking in the morning light while you argued with him. It makes König eager for what was to come; for what could be, between the two of you.

“Thank you…” You finally spoke, breaking that verbal silence with a softened voice and tone, your attention falling to the gifts he had given you. “…for sending me the baby supplies. And the flowers, and the self-care items.”

“You should rest, take it easy while I am gone. You have enough wood inside, Ja?” König had made sure to bring in stacks before he left, setting them in the furnace room so you wouldn’t have to head outside and do it yourself. It was just one of many things he had tasked himself with before being recalled to base.

“Yes, thank you.” You set the spoon down in the bowl and reach for two eggs, König watches you do it all until his attention is diverted.

One of his soldiers knocks on the door of his office and enters when prompted, standing at attention. König watches the soldier and knows, without needing to be told, that he was needed. The mission that called him back to base, and the unit he was going with, were ready. With the acknowledgement, König had waved his hand at the soldier to dismiss him, and then he prepared himself for the goodbye.

“Liebeling-“ König starts speaking, but he doesn’t have to. He knows you are aware this is goodbye for now.

“Don’t get shot. Please.” You make the request as if he can help it, as if he could choose to avoid any and all gunfire that would be aimed at him.

“Eat well, and rest. Don’t overindulge in chocolate or sweets. Drink water. Stay warm, and don’t-“ König is speaking to you like he’s addressing a soldier, a natural quip that makes you laugh through the screen.

“Yes, okay. Mother alpha.” Your voice is teasing, taunting, yet it blooms a kind of warmth in his chest that makes a natural smile break on his face beneath his mask.

“I will call you when I can.” König finally starts to rise from the chair he was sitting on, ready to end the call.

“I’ll be fine.” Your voice echoes in his mind, and then you continue. “Don’t worry, alpha.”

Alpha. You say it, address him with his natural designation, yet it means more to him than something so simple—it’s an acknowledgement that you accept this courtship.

That you accept him.

“Gut.” The single word is all König can say before the call ends and even after the screen goes black again, all he can do is stare at his reflection.

His omega. His child. His.

That is what will wait for him upon returning home.