Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t like thinking about what had happened that night. 

How it had started so normal just to end up so fucked up. How the polluted sky had looked like when he had spent a few hours perched on a rooftop for a stakeout, or his stomach had growled at the end of it, demanding food. How he had decided to take a look out of Crime Alley, just be safe.

Jason didn’t like thinking about what had happened next.

He sighed and sat on the cheap couch of one of his smallest safe houses. It had made him feel better, to pick one where he could see everything from its’ every corner, but now that he was there it lacked the comfort and the scents he truly needed.

Mainly, it lacked a nest.

Jason shook his head. He was more than his instinct, more than what his biology demanded, and he had no intention of giving into it, no matter how much nausea swam in his belly.

He looked down at it, breath coming out shakily.

He didn’t like thinking about what had happened that night, no, but the result was impossible to forget.

Pregnant.

Pregnant with a baby he hadn’t planned for and yet now had. Not for love, not after choosing an Alpha to spend the rest of his life with, not after a mating bite he had never thought was in his cards and still had secretly dreamed about as a kid. Pregnant after he had ended up in the middle of an operation that for some fucking reason Batman himself had not known about – because Jason couldn’t stand the guy and had no intention of ever being in the same room as him, at least before enacting his plan of revenge on the clown, but he had once been his kid and had no doubt whatsoever that the Bat would have stopped those men, if he had known what they were doing. If there was something the whole family despised, after all, was villains causing ruts and heats to be able to do whatever they wanted with their victims.

Jason hadn’t revealed himself to the bats and he had no intention of doing so for a while longer at the very least, and a part of him wondered if that had been his undoing. Maybe, if he had, he would have been able to call for help.

Hell, maybe he would have known at least that the toxin didn’t need to be inhaled to work and therefore his helmet was pointless. He would have made sure to cover every inch of his skin, instead of keep fighting with an open wound and letting the heat-inducing substance enter directly into his bloodstream.

He had killed every single one of those men, in the end, before they could even touch him. At the first glimpse of something wrong, at the first cramp in his lower belly, the first stir of his groin, he had allowed the green to help him finish the job as quickly as possible and booked it.

He just hadn’t been fast enough to reach a safe house before the effect had hit at its full force.

He shook his head. He really didn’t like thinking about what had happened that night. 

The question, however, remained the same as it had since he had found out its result: was he going to keep it?

He leaned back on the couch and sighed.

Although despising with all his heart the way the pup had been conceived, he couldn’t help the recoiling nausea he felt at the mere idea of ending the pregnancy. When he was still living on the streets, before Batman, before Robin’s magic, before everything else, he had thought about the day he would present and what that would have meant for him. Homeless Omegas didn’t last long, especially kids, so it had been a deep fear of his, a prayer whispered in the dead of the night, please let me be a Beta or an Alpha. Then, at the Manor, even properly fed for the first time in his entire life, he had turned out to be a late bloomer, not a hint of presenting hormones even as he approached the age when the milky traces in his scent should have been mixed with a pinch of his new orientation’ ones. 

He had died like that.

Still smelling like a pup.

And after the pit, well… Jason hadn’t appreciated presenting as an Omega, no, and during his first desperate heats his body hadn’t longed for a mate but only for the comfort of his pack. When those had passed and he had been able to start suppressants, although he burned through those far quicker than a normal person, he had realized quickly that dying had to have consequences.

He had been buried in the ground, after all. How could a dead body create new life?

Except that apparently he was alive enough to do it. Even if he had not planned for it, or wished for it to happen this way, he still had a pup growing inside of him – and what if this was his only chance? What if he got rid of it, which was his right and his decision only, just to never be able to get pregnant again?

Jason had never allowed himself to think so far in the future, when he was a kid. He had been too focused on surviving, too scared of the responsibility of taking care of someone else when he himself was struggling not to starve or freeze to death. Becoming Robin, later on, had made him think about what would have happened, if he had indeed presented as an Omega and would have ever decided to stop fighting in order to have children; would have Bruce been angry at him? Would he have sent him away? 

It wasn’t something he had allowed himself to even imagine.

Now, though… 

He focused on the small place, the few pieces of furniture, the scarcity of familiar scents, and grunted. It was alright for a night, maybe two, but not to live a normal life, not if he wanted the pup in his belly to grow up strong. Everyone knew an Omega in distress had more chances of losing the pregnancy at such an early stage and Jason… Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it. 

A pup was blameless, right?
And it wasn’t like he was traumatized by the-the-the thing or anything, bad shit had happened to him all the time, all his life even, so he wasn’t going to cry about it. He had been dealt more than one crappy hand in life, after all – and the pup had no blame for his sire’s actions. 

Besides, the monster was dead.

He didn’t even have to tell the baby what had happened. He could just pretend the man had loved them very much but had died before the birth. He could fake it.

Alone.

Jason looked around once more, before squeezing his eyes so hard he saw stars in his eyelids, and sniffed. 

He was fine. He’d always be fine, he was Red Hood. 

And it wouldn’t be the first time he’d nurse a pup, when the time would come. He knew what to do, what to expect.

It was just the lack of a proper nest and the scent of someone who could protect the both of them, who’d make him feel safe, to cause his mood to be so glum. Everyone always talked about hormones, after all.

He hugged his legs to his chest, trying to feel less alone.

He hated that even after digging his way out of his own grave, after ending up in the pit, after training with the League, even after finding himself face to face with a snarling Batman in all his Alpha’s growling stance, there was a part of him who cried out for the comfort of a pack.

Not a pack, to be honest.

But they weren’t his, anymore, were they? 

Were they ever?

A part of him doubted it.
… And yet it didn’t really change how it made him feel. 

There hadn’t been an Omega at the Manor since Martha Wayne.

He knew it. Alfred was a Beta. Bruce and Dick, both Alphas. From what he had gathered about the Replacement, the kid they had given his Robin costume to, the one they had so easily accepted in the pack when Jason hadn’t even deserved enough love to be avenged, scratch that, to be grieved, was a freshly presented Beta. If they all didn’t wear patches he was sure he’d smell a little trace of milky pup scent on his skin even now.

And then Tim himself had been replaced, which should have made Jason feel a little better but really didn’t, because it only meant that the pack would never change its ways. Always stepping on children they should have loved and protected, and instead starved of affection until they were ready to accept anything – and the first time he had met the Replacement with the Red Robin’s suit he had felt a protective rumble rise in his chest, which was absurd and undeserved.

Until he’d seen the new Robin and the instinct to tear Bruce’s throat out with his teeth had been overwhelming, because that kid? That annoying stuck-up child, who had yet to present? Damian I’m-better-than-you Al Ghul Wayne? He was his pup.

Maybe not by blood. But it had been Jason’s milk he’d suck avidly from his chest, his nest he’d crawl in looking for safety and a warm embrace. Jason the only one allowed to see the emotions Damian would hide from everyone else, especially his Alpha mother and grandfather. 

And now that pup was wearing his suit and running around fighting villains who should have been in the ground for years?! 

The fact that he felt like that, however, was only making his instinct to crawl back to the Manor stronger than ever, looking for the protection of his pack Alpha and his Alpha brother, the calming roles of the two Betas, and the milky scent of the first and only pup he ever fed from his chest; Jason wanted all of that. Wanted his pup to have that. It was growing inside of him, now, unplanned as it had been. Unwanted as the mating had been.

The Alpha had found him as Jason was stumbling just out of the edge of Crime Alley, where his men would have been able to protect him, and Jason… Jason had fought him at the best of his feverish abilities, while his body cried at him to submit and present. He had clawed the Alpha’s face, his throat, his arms, until his fingers had gone numb. Until his arms had lost strength. Until even snarling had become too hard and the heat had become unbearable.

At the end of it all, when the knot was finally going down and so was the temperature in his brain, Jason had been able to think, to move without his instinct flaring and sending him in the wrong direction. So he had bent his leg, reached for the gun hidden at his ankle, and shot the guy in the head.

The man had still been inside him, when he did it.

Jason really didn’t like thinking about that night, no.

But the pup who was growing inside of him wasn’t guilty of any of that – and again, Jason was fine, it was nothing, it was just a bad memory among so many others. It was okay.

It had to be, because he had been through enough, he didn’t need that too. He was… damaged enough on his own. Right? He didn’t need to add-to add that.

So it was fine. He had decided it was fine and it was.

A shiver went down his spine as the lack of familiar scents in the apartment suddenly became too much to bear and he stood up before hiding his face behind a domino mask and his famous red helmet. His jacket was the last missing piece he got on, before he slipped out of the window and left the safe house; he had a better one, bigger but mostly more comfortable, where he’d spend the heats he had to actually live through between months of suppressants – and while there would only be his own scent, there, at least he’d find the nest he had built last time, hopefully alongside the resemblance of peace and calm. Maybe he could convince Damian to bring him a shirt, during one of their usual secret meet-ups.

Maybe even one of- no, he cut himself off with a growl. Damian’s clothes would be more than enough.

Jason didn’t need a pack Alpha, nor anyone else.

He scowled as he slowly moved from roof to roof, far too aware of the puppy growing in him to feel comfortable in running and jumping without a reason, when he could climb and walk instead.

He went down a fire escape, crossed the road and went up another one again, because not being a bat anymore didn’t mean he had lost the instincts trained into him when he was a kid; he seriously doubted, if he had to be honest, that he’d ever stop preferring being up high rather than the ground.

Keeping a hand on the gun on his hip just in case, he went left, crossed a few roofs, turned right, left again, then right once more. 

Walking briskly but not running, sometimes climbing down to street level just to go up again, meant proceeding at a slower pace than he’d normally would and he was still at least half an hour from his good safe house when he heard a noise from his left.

Someone would have assumed it was the wind, or a figment of their imagination; Jason, however? He had spent years with the Bat. He recognized the flutter of a cape when he heard it.

And what the hell were they doing in Crime Alley? He had made sure, crystal clear, that it was his territory and no one else’s and that he didn’t appreciate intruders of the flying kind – except for Damian, although he had kept it under wrap, because he could almost picture their scowls if they ever saw the big, scary, criminal Red Hood hanging out with their baby bird. 

And now at least one of them was there and Jason was already pissed off, so pissed off, and- another flutter, this time on his right.

“I’m not in the mood tonight,” he growled as threateningly as he could, the helmet’s modulator hiding the scared undertone of his words. He couldn’t help it, no matter how much he hated it: it was instinct. Hormones swimming in his entire being. Omega’s nature bringing him to the edge of a fight or flight response. 

He took a deep breath.

He could do it. They didn’t know who he really was. They didn’t know his designation and their Jason had never even presented. They especially didn’t know he was pregnant, considering he had discovered it only two days before. 

He willed himself to calm down. He was fine.

“Red Hood,” came Batman’s growling voice from behind him and he suddenly realized he had stopped on the roof, like a fucking moron, like he was still a Robin in need of orders, like he was nothing more than a dumb pup freezing at the first hint of having his pack Alpha close by. “We need to talk.”

Nightwing landed to his right, on the edge of the building.

But wasn’t the first sound he had heard coming from his left?
“Fuck off,” Jason snarled and shit, was he showing his teeth? 

“We will talk,” Batman insisted in a grunt. He took a step forward and Hood turned around to look at him, slowly like he was in control and not on the verge of ripping someone’s throat out. As long as he could pretend to be okay, the night didn’t have to end up in blood. Right?

Red Robin stepped on the roof as well, opposite Nightwing with Batman’s imposing figure closing the triangle they had created around him.

Jason shook his head, heart beating furiously in his chest. “Not now, B,” he growled. 

They had tried to corner him, but there was still a way out: he could still jump on the roof behind him and run from there… except that the idea of being chased was tightening his throat. 

Why the hell wasn’t he born an Alpha? Or a Beta, even? Everything but an Omega.

He barely noticed the way they all stiffened and he frowned, before realizing he had called him like any other bat would have. Dammit. 

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

He sneered, forcing out every ounce of bravado he had in him. “Call my secretary, book an appointment.”

Was jumping away the solution? They had never been the kind of people to simply give up, after all.

Maybe he could convince them?

“Two nights ago,” Batman grunted.

Jason frowned. “What about it?”

They had met, sure, a couple of hours after Red Hood had taken care of a child trafficking ring and left quite a lot of bodies behind him, but he was sure that, while the whole family probably suspected him to be the culprit, none of them actually knew it for certain. He had acted weirdly, that night, in front of the monsters in charge of hurting the kids and those instinctive reactions, paired with the nausea and the longing for a nest and a pack, had been as loud as an alarm bell in his head, so he had stopped at the clinic and “stole” – not asking for it, but still, leaving a hundred bucks on the counter – a few pregnancy tests.

He had them hidden in his pocket, when he had met the bats, so he could understand why his mind had been elsewhere; still, they had barely spoken.

Bruce made a low, grumbling sound. “You called Robin by his name.”

Oh, fuck!, Jason thought. He hadn’t even noticed, he had just told him to go home because it was late and he had school the day after, nothing more. And yet he had screwed up.

He looked around, faking disinterest while his heart climbed through his throat. “Where’s the kid, anyway?”

“Away from you,” Batman stated.

Fair.

Rude, but fair.

Jason sighed and shrugged, tired. “So what?”

Then, because instinct aside he could still see the opportunity, he looked at the three vigilantes. “How about I go and you all consider yourselves lucky I’m not interested in spilling the beans?” 

“How do you know each other?” Red Robin intervened then, voice more curious than scared.

Red Hood scowled at the stupid puppy, who had walked a few feet closer like he wasn’t a known criminal with a gun on his hip – and maybe, in another moment, he’d wonder why he hadn’t taken out his weapon, why he hadn’t threatened them with more than just his voice. Now? He felt his hair rise on his neck and he moved two fingers to press the scent-blocking patch to his skin.

“Robin admitted he knows you,” Nightwing explained, head tilted like he was studying his every movement… something he was probably doing, all things considered. “But he refuses to explain how or since when.”

Jason snorted. “So you benched him.”

“Who are you,” Batman growled then and he took a step forward, forcing Red Hood to move backward in order to keep the distance between them.

He tightened his lips before a hiss could come out of them. He really needed to go before his instincts fucked him up more than they were already doing. “I don’t wear a helmet to look pretty, you know,” he pointed out.

“You’re in my city-”

“I was born here, you territorial piece of-” 

“You murder people-” Bruce went on, loud enough to cover his voice.

“You don’t have any proof of that, though, do you?” Jason mocked him, because while everyone knew he had taken control of Crime Alley and how he had managed to, he had been very careful about not leaving traces or getting caught by videocameras.

Batman snarled, a hint of aggressive Alpha scent coming out of him through the patches Jason knew he religiously kept on his neck. Everything in the Omega tensed and suddenly he could barely think, half pushing to submit and half to run away as fast as he could.

He had a pup to protect and an Alpha with bared teeth in front of him.

“B…” Red Robin whispered, raising a hand towards him like he could calm him down from a distance.

“You’re a skilled fighter and have some sort of moral code, if your work with pups and vulnerable people prove anything,” Batman didn’t relent, “but you’re an unknown, dangerous player who knows Robin’s identity-”

“I know more than just his, Bruce.”

Dammit. It had slipped out of him with a mocking tone born from frustration and anger and pain, because his own father didn’t recognize him and had him cornered and was scolding him like Jason was still a pup, and at the same time it was a major mistake. 

There was no way the Alpha would let him go now, was it? Not before unmasking him, not before finding out who he really was, not before forcing him to submit to him and the pack – but Jason had more to protect than just himself, now.

Batman took a step forward with a snarl, making his instinct flare in panic.

And suddenly Jason was running.

Chapter Text

There was a time, according to history books from all over the world, when Alphas and Omegas mated after a chase; the former would try to catch the latter and therefore prove their physical abilities, the only thing that mattered to the instinct pushing towards the best chance for strong pups who would survive and even thrive. Omegas would be pumped with natural hormones that would kick in the second they started running but sometimes, especially when the mating wasn’t wanted, instead of excitement they would get flooded with panic. At that point they’d either try to run even faster, movements controlled by pure terror, or they’d succumb to the primordial need to keep themselves safe… and they’d submit to the Alpha following them. Present themselves by pushing their heads and chests to the ground and raising their hips. Bending their necks to show compliance.

Well, Jason had never been good at staying down.

He jumped on the other roof before he even managed to think that maybe running wasn’t the best idea; he was lucky they couldn’t smell him through the scent-blocking patch on his neck, because in any other instance it would have made instinct kick in immediately in any Alpha. Tim, as a Beta, wouldn’t have felt the need to chase either way, but Bruce, Dick? He was double-lucky that the bats had iron-grip control on urges like that and went through rigorous training.

Still, he was Red Hood, someone they considered dangerous, someone who knew their identities and had cockily said so, someone they probably thought was an Alpha, even, and who had some sort of relationship with their pup. Someone, more than anything, who they wanted to stop, unmask and interrogate.

It took less than a second, therefore, for them to start following him through the roofs.

The problem?

While they didn’t know his designation, he knew theirs. 

And he was an Omega chased by two Alphas and a Beta.

Even worse, actually: he was a pregnant Omega chased by a pack.

Panic screeched in Jason’s ears as he turned left at the last second and leaped to another building. In another life, he’d have their scents on him at all times, not to mark possession as much as belonging, and they’d share a nest and he’d feel safe, protected, and they’d feel centered by his mere presence. In another life, he’d still have a family who loved him, who’d miss him if he was gone, who’d trust him with the pups and be proud of his instincts. In another life, he’d still have the bonds connecting him to them and Bruce wouldn’t chase him, but he’d hug him and love him and take care of him – because Jason wouldn’t have lost his place in the pack. He wouldn’t have lost them, period.

Protect the pup, he thought as that biological imperative overpowered anything else and echoed in his mind over and over again, with growing despair and distress. 

He ran a little faster, darting again to his left as the steps behind him quickened their paces as well, and then he jumped to another roof. Protect the pup, his mind repeated but Jason tried to remind himself and the fear that was locking his muscles that, while a threat, the bats would never kill him. That he knew them, that they were more than faceless Alphas and Beta hunting him down, that he’d be fine.

Yeah. Try arguing with 300’000 years of evolution screaming at you to follow the instinct hardwired into your DNA.
Jason sped up, a whine thankfully locked in his throat, and when he reached the following roof his foot slipped on the damp metal edge, making him land heavily and without his usual grace. The voices behind him were closer than he would have liked.

“Stop!” Batman growled with an Alpha command laced in his tone. 

Dread settled like a stone in Jason’s stomach. Going against his former pack Alpha, even though the bond had snapped with his death, was one of the things he had forced himself to learn to do since coming back and he had, really! – but he had never done it while carrying a puppy, before, and doubt flared inside him for an agonizing instant. 

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and faked a left before turning right at the last possible moment; judging by the sounds of steps and fluttering capes they were gaining ground, no matter the little tricks he kept pulling, and Jason reached in the inside pocket of his leather jacket to get a smoke bomb, which he immediately tossed behind him. He then used the cover to jump on a fire escape and quickly get on the ground, where he ran inside an old abandoned building and crossed it. When he reached the back door he slammed it open with a shoulder and kept going through the maze of alleys of the neighborhood, panting more in distress than the physical toll on his body.

Protect the pup, he thought again.

He desperately tried to remember Bruce’s code, Dick’s warmth, Tim’s age, to convince himself he wasn’t in as much danger as he perceived it, and yet he couldn’t stop his breath from coming out ragged through the helmet’s voice modulator. Panic was fully settling in, to the point that it took him a few seconds to remember their names.

“Just leave me alone!” he screamed, almost begged.

A batarang flew past him as he dodged at the last second and he threw another smoke bomb, before using a grappling hook to get back on yet another roof. He didn’t want to give the pack following him a reason to hurt his baby, so he consciously decided against taking out his gun. It would have escalated the conflict, right? And if there was one chance the Alpha would take mercy on an Omega…

Another batarang was thrown against him and Jason jumped and rolled out of the way, but he lost a precious second and when he stood up again he felt Red Robin’s cape on his leg, so he snarled as loudly as he could and kept going, and he jumped on another roof and almost fell because he hadn’t gotten enough run-up. Breath short, steps insecure, he just couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

Protect the pup.

Something cut through his pants and nicked his tight, thankfully superficially, so it didn’t take him down – but the pain opened up a flow of panic. He slipped, landed hard on the cold roof, stood up with another snarl, started running again.

And then someone slammed into him, an Alpha, and he reached blindly with a hand to claw at his face, forgetting he had gloves on because of the instinct screaming in his veins to just move, fight, protect his puppy. He managed to stay standing and he turned around, realizing he had been cornered for real, this time; behind him, a drop too big even for his grappling hook. 

A towering shape attacked him and Jason fought back out of pure desperation, his movements sloppy but meant to hurt, because a pack was trying to get him to submit when he had a life inside of him and he had a responsibility, and he’d kill if he had to, he’d rip all of their throats out, even with a helmet in between them, even if it meant getting hurt in the process. He had to-he- he had to…

Someone stopped him from escaping to his right, another – taller, with a frown and lips moving like he was speaking, and was he? – pushed him from his left. And in front of Jason, a growling Alpha, impossibly big in his armor, stepping forward with another command to which he replied by backing up, muscles tensed to the point of pain, ready to move. 

He couldn’t jump, this time, he couldn’t… he raised an arm just in time to stop someone from hitting him and he kicked out, growling so much his chest hurt, vibrations running down his arms – or was he shaking?

Protect the pup, he begged himself as he moved again. Every action was instinctual now, muscle memory and animalistic pull to keep fighting, no matter what, and he jumped to avoid a low kick and he shoved with an arm and punched with the other and kneed someone, and his mind was bending under the weight of what was happening. The terror was too strong, too deep, and the man to his left was saying something and the kind-of-pup to his right had a hint of fear in his voice, but Jason couldn’t understand anything if not the fact that the pack was going to hurt him, to hurt his unborn puppy, and he couldn’t let the Alphas kill them before they even took their first breath.

He snarled once more, desperate, crying, suffocating in panicked hormones; the guy to his left moved to his back and got him into a headlock, an arm under his neck to cut his air supply and force him to almost bend his body backwards, and the Alpha in front of him-

The Alpha kicked him. Hard.

Directly on his belly.

Pain exploded in his entire body and the yelp he let out in surprise turned into a scream, a terrified sound that made them all step back, even the man who was holding Jason’s neck – and when he removed the arm around it, due to the friction and the sweat covering the Omega’s skin, a corner of the scent-blocking patch was raised.

The effect was immediate: just as Jason fell hard on his knees, bent over with trembling hands covering his abdomen, the air filled with the stench of his terror, as deep and as old as mankind itself, the honey-sweet scent of Omega… and the milky traces of pregnancy.

Jason gagged in the helmet, barely managing to raise one hand to push the end of the patch back on his skin, and he bent even more until his forehead was resting on the floor, his whole body trembling. He was whining loudly and the pain and the fear were so strong in his mind that he barely noticed the way the pack Alpha had stumbled back, or the younger one had whispered “oh God, no”, or the barely out of puphood kid they had with them had opened his mouth in shock.

Time stopped like that, adrenaline still pushing their chests up and down quickly and nothing else moving as Jason cried. The world was losing focus in his eyes, instinct ready to take the reins in front of what had happened, what he had fought for and probably lost, and he was about to let himself succumb to it when someone landed in front of him, a loud, puppy growl echoing in the night as the newcomer shielded him with his whole body.
“What. Did you do. To him,” a young voice snapped and Jason, for one, incredible second, was able to blink the fog out of his eyes and raise his head.

Panting, shivering, whining, he managed to look at his pup, his Damian, standing tall between him and his own father and pack Alpha as he shook with anger and fear.

And Jason wanted to tell him that he was fine. That he didn’t have to. That he was sorry if they had scared him. He wanted to push him to his chest and let him nurse and calm down, and reassure him that they still had each other, no matter what.

But the world was fading again and he desperately wanted to hurt the Bat as much as he had hurt him, so he used the last of his energy to look straight at his former pack Alpha and let out a snarl full of pain.

“You buried your kid, once. Now you want me to bury mine too?"

He saw Bruce recoil, hard. Take a step back in horror.

And then Jason was gone and his Omega instinct was in charge.

Bruce had never seen his son tremble like that before. Since coming to live with him in Gotham, Damian had shown even too much control and paraded aloofness and cockiness rather than any kind of insecurity or fear, no matter what the pack managed to smell the few times he’d slip up and let his real scent betray him – which didn’t happen often, because the League had rigorous rules on the topic and hiding chemosignals was a common practice. 

Now, however?

He was crouched to cover Red Hood, still on his hands and knees on the cold roof, and he was baring his milky fangs to appear more threatening as his whole body shook; Batman didn’t know if what he was seeing was panic or the effort to go against his father and pack Alpha, but it unsettled him either way. His pup shouldn’t have been in such a state of distress, not after all he had been through, not when in Gotham, safe from the Al Ghuls’ hands.

Damian let out a high-pitched growl, young and full of fear. “Touch my dam again and I will end you.”

Pups didn’t go feral, not the way adults did, but in extreme cases of stress and terror they could reach a similar state, a little less intense and yet still a toll on their small bodies. It wasn’t that possibility, though, that made Batman inhale sharply.

He had known, in the back of his mind, in the way he assimilated notions to connect like dots to find a pattern, that Damian had been nursed by an Omega, in the League. Being an Alpha, Talia had never produced milk, and the Al Ghuls were an old-style family, firmly convinced that a pup would grow up stronger if fed directly by an Omega’s chest, so Bruce hadn’t been shocked the one time Damian had slipped up and talked about his dam. It had made the Alpha feel uneasy, maybe, because the term dam implied a parental figure more than a nurse or someone similar, but still, he had been careful to hide every reaction in order not to spook the pup from opening up.

And now Damian was baring his fangs at him because… because Batman had hit his dam. He had hit an Omega after chasing him down with another Alpha and a Beta. He had hit an Omega who was carrying a pup.

Nausea threatened to resurface as he stumbled another step back. 

The scent-blocking patch was back on Red Hood, the glue slack due to sweat and friction, and while it covered most of the man’s scent – the real him, what would have helped Batman identify him –, it really wasn’t enough to stop the scent of terrified Omega from seeping out. It was sweet by nature and rotten by panic at the same time, like moldy honey, and underneath it all… 

Bruce stopped breathing as the wind picked up and brought to him the scent of pregnancy once more. The milky undertones were subdued enough to let him know Hood wasn’t far along, probably not even three months, and he gagged when he smelled a hint of blood coming from him as well.

For a second, a horrifying second, it had reminded him of Jason.

Damian, in the meantime, had started whining loudly.

He watched his pup as he turned around and side-hugged the Omega, still on his hands and knees. “You are carrying,” he whispered, although loud enough for all of them to hear.

Batman frowned.

“You didn’t know?” he asked before he could stop himself. Maybe, if not even the pup who considered him his dam had known, then… then what? Batman had still chased him, tried to Alpha command him, ignored his pleas to be left alone and all the little distressed sounds he had let out. He had still terrified and hit a pregnant Omega on the stomach – stomach, right? He had aimed higher to get him to lose his breath, more towards his chest than his groin, but Hood had moved at the last second and now Batman couldn’t remember where exactly he had landed the blow.

If he miscarries, it’s on me, he thought, desperate as only a protective Alpha with pups of his own could be.

“You buried your kid, once. Now you want me to bury mine too?”

He swallowed the whine that threatened to come out of him.

“Did you not see how scared he was?!” Damian yelled instead of answering, turning to look at their pack once more. “Did you not think, did you- how could you?!”

And Bruce would have justified himself, saying he had thought Red Hood was dangerous to him and to Gotham, he was someone who knew too much, who refused to bend, who had to be stopped, but bile was in his throat and every word appeared meaningless in his mind. Because he should have thought about the possibility, right? He was a detective, he should have…

The truth was that, in hearing Red Hood’s clear distress, he had thought it was good. He had seen it as another Alpha finally realizing what his role in the power chain was. A strong Alpha forced to submit in front of the most powerful one.

Not for a second he had felt an inch of doubt on the man’s designation… and yet the evidence had been all over Crime Alley, right? The way Hood had claimed the territory might have looked like an Alpha’s instinct, but it was perfectly understandable as an Omega’s too. The violence he would lash out when those in said territory were threatened? 

Most of all, Batman now saw it clearly, his behavior with pups.

“Red Hood is hurt, Robin,” Nightwing took over as time stretched on.

A growl. “I do not need to wonder why!”

“We should get him somewhere safe, so we can help him.”

That seemed to make Damian pause and Bruce nodded and took a step forward, hands stretched toward the pair – except that he was too slow to realize that Red Hood’s whines had stopped and he’d been clearly paying attention to all of their movements, because one moment the Alpha was reaching in his direction and the next one the Omega was taking off.

This time, towards Tim.

Well, not really.

They all shouted as Hood ran past Red Robin, probably seeing him as the easiest one to take by surprise, or maybe the less threatening, and all but threw himself on another roof. He had a sort of limp, not really like he had trouble with a leg and more like he couldn’t stop from hunching forward a little – Bruce, although with a heavy heart, thought his belly might be cramping quite a lot –, and still he covered a lot of ground in his fearful escape.

“Do not follow,” Damian ordered before sprinting behind his dam and Batman bit down a growl in front of the clear challenge his pup had made; it wasn’t the time to scruff him and remind him who was in charge, though, so he let it go and gestured Nightwing and Red Robin: they’d all keep their distance… but they’d all still go with the pair.

Self-loath settled in Batman’s guts as they crossed roof after roof. They – he – had made a mistake that night and now a pregnant Omega in distress and with a possible miscarriage happening as they moved was fleeing in the dark. Letting him and Damian be was simply not an option.

Except that Red Hood, even when reacting in a primal, terrified way, was quite the opponent; it became obvious in just a few minutes that he had realized he was being chased again – although at a slower pace and with no aggressive intention on the pack’s part –, because every movement became more frantic and even a little sloppier. Adrenaline was probably fighting desperately to keep the Omega upright and running, no matter the scent of blood permeating the air around him and making them all gag at the scents of distress and pain mixed with the milky traces of pregnancy.

No Omega should have smelled like that.

And Bruce – no, Batman, that had been Batman’s mistake – could feel his heart roar at the idea of being the cause behind such a traumatic moment in an Omega’s life. As a category as a whole they were already victimized enough… and while he didn’t tolerate any kind of discrimination, which meant arresting criminals no matter the designation, he’d never kick a pregnant person in the stomach. If he had known, he would have handled it all with so much more care. He would have not chased, even, and he would have tried to understand the Omega’s point of view. He would have presented himself less like an aggressive Alpha fighting a possible threat in his territory and more like a protective presence who could guide and sure, would scruff and punish in case of need, but would never actually damage someone vulnerable.

Now? Now Bruce wasn’t sure they could ever walk back from what had happened that night.

They all followed as Red Hood ran down a fire escape and Robin jumped behind him, although not before letting out a harsh growl meant to stop them from following, and once on the ground they moved through alleys and convicted buildings until they found themselves in a building site.

“This is dangerous,” Red Robin pointed out as they proceeded between a big excavator and a few concrete mix machines.

And then they all stopped, eyebrows raised in surprise, when Red Hood let out a high-pitched whine and scrambled towards a crane.

“Hood, there is no need…” Robin tried, a desperate note in his tone that Bruce wasn’t used in hearing from his most controlled pup, and they stared in horror as the Omega ignored him to start climbing one of the two cranes standing there.

He had closed himself in a metaphorical corner and now he was trying to find a high enough ground to feel safe from the pack who had hurt him, Batman knew it, just like he knew that the wind would be stronger the higher he’d go, more exposed than on the ground where the machines and the buildings surrounding the site protected them, and that Hood’s trembling hands might mean he wouldn’t hold himself the way they all knew he normally could.

“This is on you!” Robin yelled again, a whine underneath his words, and the pack stood there and took the blame, because the pup was right and-and… and Red Hood was whining loudly halfway to the top of the crane, body spasming in pain as he bent a little to cover his belly.

Damian started climbing too and Bruce just stood there, looking up at the two going higher and higher.

“What do we do?” Nightwing asked and his guilt and fear came clear through their pack bond.

Red Robin frowned, hands twisting in anxiety. “If we get too close he might freak out and fall.”

Red Hood, now sitting on top of the crane, was turned towards Robin, just a few feet beneath him, the Omega’s whines and the pup’s soothing coos echoing in the night.

“He’s distracted,” Batman noticed. 

Another crane was directly behind the first one, with a jump in between them that any bat would have been able to make even injured.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Nightwing murmured, worried.

But Bruce didn’t listen – he was already running.

Chapter Text

The crane stood tall like a metal skeleton, Earth’s own claw ready to strike the sky but perpetually frozen mid-motion. Gotham’s many sirens and violent sounds were attenuated the more Batman climbed – the more pitiful Omega whines arrived to his ears instead, followed every single time by Robin’s almost desperate pleas. With every gush of wind the scent of blood made Bruce’s nostrils flare and gums ache.

Red Hood was on the top of the crane near his own and he was shaking badly. Terrified. Hurt. Trapped.

And while they all knew the criminal had incredible fighting skills both in hand-to-hand combat and with firepower, Bruce couldn’t keep the Alpha instinct in him from seeing the man as someone hurt in need of help. 

Shame burned angrily in his guts as he climbed higher.

Batman should have been a symbol of hope for vulnerable people, not a violent nightmare for a pregnant Omega now in such distress that he was shaking like a leaf, barely holding himself up on the metal crane – and normally vulnerable and Red Hood didn’t go together, but now? 

And Bruce was the one who got him like that.

Chased him.

Kicked him hard.

He could see drops of blood run from Hood’s drenched pants to the metal to the ground, a sick sort of rain that had every instinct in the Alpha screaming. Every step up the crane brought him closer to an abyss that had nothing to do with the concrete waiting on the ground for any wrong movement, every breath a reminder of mistakes from his past – arguments with Dick pushing him to Blüdhaven, allowing grief to keep Tim at arm’s length for months, his inability to open up with Damian the way he deserved and needed to learn. 

A clock running out, a warehouse, a coffin.

Jason.

God, Jason.

He wasn’t sure why his mind kept associating Hood’s trembling figure with his son, who had been so small, so kind, so sweet when he wanted to. Maybe because, while he never had the chance to present, Bruce had been sure he’d be an Omega. Maybe because sometimes he’d look at his three kids and imagine him there, too, fitting in like Bruce was sure he would have. 

What would have his son said, looking at him now?

The wind picked up again and a new wave of panic and blood and never-stopping whines reached him, which was terrible and yet… and yet. It meant he was still alive. It meant there was still a chance to fix it.

Finally Batman climbed on top of the crane, only a few feet jump separating him from Red Hood, who was on all fours, shaking violently and whining and gagging for the strength of his panic. Robin wasn’t far from him, his hands raised in calming gestures, chirping lowly in a soothing manner Bruce had never heard from him, not even with victims or pups after particularly gnarly crimes. It spoke of a relationship he had been blind to, a deeper one he’d ever imagined, and a softer side of his kid. It spoke… it spoke of pack.

And Bruce felt it strongly, like something was calling him, pushing him to protect, to guide, to unite. 

But he had been the one to kick, to chase, to show his teeth. 

He jumped the short distance and landed on the crane his pup and the distressed Omega were on, letting out immediately a soft, protective rumble, in the hope he wouldn’t scare him more. Robin shot him a threatening look at him behind the domino mask, although he didn’t move, and Batman took a step forward.

Red Hood turned his head, still on fours, and whined.

It was hard to remember how dangerous the man could be, how quickly he had taken over Crime Alley, when he was bent over in pain and vulnerable and full of pure panicked instinct. 

“You buried your kid, once. Now you want me to bury mine too?” he had asked him, full of venom, and Bruce was now looking at a bleeding criminal, the proof of the hurt even a man with strict morals could cause; he was looking at a crime lord who had caused havoc and found delight in mocking a pack of skilled vigilantes, he was looking at probably the strongest Omega he had ever met. 

He was looking –  but it was Jason, he was seeing. 

Jason, who’d be crouched down to comfort the man and ease his distress. Jason, who would have probably been proud of someone taking care of Crime Alley, even through death. Jason, who’d be appalled by his own Alpha’s actions.

Red Hood shook hard, whined higher.

Then he turned halfway around, face hidden by the red helmet, and Batman smelled tears and blood and fear. Corrupted honey, milk.

“Dam,” came Damian’s plea, so unusually shaky. “Let us help.”

“I should just jump,” Red Hood replied, mechanic voice flat, with no hint of emotion behind it, probably spared only for a few moments by the primordial instincts that had plagued him. They all knew they would hit him hard again, very soon, unless a doctor looked him over. “There’s nothing good for me in this life.”

Robin winced, hard. “You have a pup,” the kid murmured.

Was he talking about himself, or the baby in his dam’s belly?

Red Hood’s head snapped in his direction. He took a deep breath. Bent halfway again with a weepy grunt as drops of blood followed the ones already there.“I wanted to keep them safe, I just- I just wanted…”

Bruce bent on his knees and raised a hand toward the Omega, slowly, like in front of a frightened kitten that had been hurt before. Hurt by him, no less.

He let out a soft grumble of comfort, one that came out of instinct and the sound of the Crime Alley’s accent in his ears, the rotting sweetness of that confession, the memory of a grave too big for the small body he had found in the rubbles. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, voice barely more than a whisper under the weight of his actions. “Let me help.”

Red Hood laughed, then coughed and cried in pain for the effort. He waved a hand towards his pants, drenched in blood. “You’re destined to be late with me, aren’t you, B?”

Ice flooded Bruce’s veins. B, the accent, the implication…

He reached out again, fingers barely grazing the Omega’s shoulder before Damian growled in warning, protective as any pup who would soon mature into an Alpha could be – especially toward his dam.

Red Hood, however, pushed into the touch and whined loudly. “Please,” he begged. “I don’t want my pup to die. Please, B, I don’t want them to die.”

And then the tension in the Omega’s body suddenly disappeared as he lost consciousness and simply… fell forward.

Once, Bruce had held his son exactly the way he was keeping Red Hood in his arms. Bridal carry, head lulled back and then carefully positioned to rest on his shoulder, arms straining not because of the physical weight but for the emotional one. The reminder of the son he had lost and missed every single day.

Catching Red Hood had been instinct. Bringing him down the crane, a necessity.

The smell of blood had gotten stronger, almost drowning the milky scent of pregnancy with a rotten hint of pain, and something in Batman had almost turned feral, to the point that only his amazing control on himself had stopped him from losing it. 

The drive to the Cave, at that point, had been frantic, and when they finally stepped out of the car Alfred was already there, warned by Tim during the drive. When Bruce lowered the Omega on the freshly prepared gurney, with a kindness and care he hadn’t shown him when fighting, it felt like he was begging for forgiveness, something he couldn’t do again before Damian stepped between him and Red Hood. 

Nightwing, who had parked the bike behind the Batmobile and followed them, tried to soothe him with a soft rumble and Bruce didn’t have the time to wonder, painfully, if the other Alpha would be trusted more, that the pup snapped his teeth in a clear threat. 

Alfred was moving behind the gurney, taking vitals and notes about the Omega’s health, and yet Damian didn’t falter; he kept standing guard, positioned between the old Beta with his dam, and the rest of the pack. Bruce felt Tim’s worried eyes on him, noticed Dick’s hesitation and guilt, and let out a soft rumble of his own, testing the waters.

Damian growled. “If he dies,” he grunted, pup-future-Alpha’s tone heavy with emotions, “I will never forgive you.”

“We can help,” Batman replied, before taking the cowl off to show his expression, his honesty. You can trust me, he wanted to say. He wasn’t that sure the pup would, though, ever again. Not after seeing his Alpha hunting down his dam.

“If you hurt him,” Damian threatened them again, “I will break every bone in your hand. I swear it, Father.”

He was trembling with the effort of standing up to his pack Alpha, that much was clear, and Bruce’s heart clenched in seeing him try so desperately to stay in control, even if anyone could see his shaking fists and milky fangs. All the kids were supposed to feel safe with him, both in the Manor and in the Cave, and now one of them was using his own body as a shield and another one… another one was buried in the ground.

Bruce’s eyes ran to Red Hood’s unconscious body.

He had twice the body built of Jason, and yet…

And yet.

“We messed up,” Dick whined and after removing his domino mask they were all subjected to his guilt-filled puppy eyes. “Please let us fix it.”

“Master Damian,” came Alfred’s calm voice then, “I require your assistance. If we are to assess the pregnancy, we must act now. Please, help me remove his armor.”

It would have been impossible to listen for a fetal heartbeat with the padded suit and that seemed to spur Robin into action, to the point that – after a last, harsh look – he gave the pack his back to face his dam and the butler. Together they removed the top half of the suit… and Bruce felt himself sway for a second.

Red Hood had a Y scar on his chest.

Jason, lying in the morgue, skin black and blue, bones bent unnaturally. A Y scar on his chest because of the autopsy. 

Blinking, he realized he was growling softly and he was now by Damian’s side, studying the Omega under the kid’s watchful eyes. He didn’t touch the man, couldn’t bring himself to, not even when every fiber of his being was pushing him to, almost begging him to spread his scent on someone in such a vulnerable position. He did, however, remove his gloves and all but tore his scent-blocking patches from his neck.

Immediately the Cave was filled with protective Alpha scent – which resulted in three different reactions. Alfred, Dick and Tim looked at him with knowing eyes. Damian’s shoulders dropped for the first time in hours. And Red Hood’s body… relaxed.

It was an odd behavior, wasn't it? Was the Omega so deep in his primordial instinct to see any non-threatening Alpha as someone to gain comfort by?
Or was there another reason? 

The scent, his scars, his accent, his words…

Bruce turned around for a moment, imitated by his two oldest kids, while Alfred and Damian made quick work of the blood-soaked pants and cleaned Red Hood quickly and efficiently, before covering him with a towel and leaving another one in between his legs. As soon as he was decent again, the pack Alpha was back at his side, refraining from taking the Omega’s hand because Damian was already squeezing it.

“You are not allowed to die,” the pup was mumbling with a tone that sounded almost like a threat, but was clearly hiding a good amount of desperation. 

Bruce passed a hand into the kid’s hair before spreading his scent down the neck; it was with relief that his touch wasn’t avoided or met with a snarl, and when he tentatively covered his back with an arm in a partial hug Damian actually leaned on him.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, his real age. How young he was. 

And he had probably scared him like never before, that night.

“Who is he, Dames?” Dick asked from where he and Tim were keeping their distance. 

Damian let out a soft puff of air that raised his shoulders under Bruce’s touch. “No one whose name you have earned.”

And could he blame him? After what had happened, after what they’ve done – Batman in particular, maybe, with Nightwing right behind, but still. He couldn’t scold the pup for being on guard when his dam had been hurt to the point of bleeding that badly, especially after following him up a crane and hearing him say he had nothing to live for.

Bruce really struggled to reconcile that image with the Red Hood he knew. The criminal he had hunted down for months, the same who had taken over Crime Alley and proved himself to be a formidable adversary… now defenseless, hurt, smelling of milk and rotten honey and blood. 

“I did not see the reason for his silence,” Damian murmured after a while. The pack Alpha barely allowed himself to breathe, trying not to spook his pup from opening up the way he would so rarely do, and at the same time wondering if he’d get new information he was feeling too guilty to ask.

“And now you understand it?” Tim asked, voice hesitant. 

Damian growled. “No,” he grunted. “I understand it less, if possible. He should have just trusted me. None of this would have happened if he had been forthcoming.”

Bruce shared a look with his other two sons who, like him, saw the irony of that sentence coming from someone who kept every single card close to his chest, but thankfully did not mention it; and while keeping him talking would have been a good distraction from Alfred’s exams, done with the same quiet efficiency the Beta used to treat stab wounds and broken ribs, but with a tension in his jaw that reminded Bruce of the aftermath of Jason’s death, Damian never once stopped following his movements with his eyes, radiating protectiveness. During so many years spent patching up vigilantes Alfred had shown over and over how well he could deal with medical emergencies and now he was clearly using all of his skills to evaluate the situation, taking blood to examine, checking the Omega’s air intake, his reactions to physical stimuli, taking out the ultrasound machine and getting it ready… 

“He did not believe me, when I told him you would have wanted to see him.”

Blinking, Bruce took a deep breath. “He’s your dam,” he said. Then, after a few seconds of consideration, “that makes him family.”

He heard Tim’s shocked inhale, Dick’s choked gasp, he saw Alfred stopping his fingers for a second before resuming, and yet he didn’t let himself waver in what he was truly offering: a place in the pack. And he’d never tolerate the killing, so either Red Hood changed his ways or they’d have problems, but pack meant more than rules, more than morals. It was family and protection and a hand stretched in welcome. It meant an amount of trust that Bruce was almost positive he couldn’t give, but he’d try, he’d try to learn, he’d try to open up, he’d try – for Damian.

His pup, who deserved more than keeping his dam a secret from his family and suffering the consequences on a cold night of October. More than seeing one of his parents kick the other one and probably kill the life he was carrying, more than begging his dam to follow him down a crane because there was still hope, in the world, and they could fix it.
And Bruce… Bruce knew how bad it was at opening up, at trusting others, at letting go of his need to keep everything under control. But he was Damian’s pack Alpha, more than that, he was his sire. Putting him in the middle of that conflict? After he had kicked a pregnant Omega in the stomach and stood there as he cried out in pain and almost definitely miscarried?

He could be better than that.

If not for his own kids, after all, for who?

“I believe you should think carefully if you mean it, Master Bruce,” Alfred intervened then, from where he was placing the ultrasound probe on Red Hood’s lower belly, “because the situation might call for you.”

Dick moved forward and spoke up before Damian could. “What do you mean?”

The Beta studied the blood exam on a tablet, then moved the probe on Red Hood’s skin. A faint heartbeat broke the silence, faint, too quick for the little Bruce knew about fetal biology, before it slowed down to a scary degree and picked up after a few seconds, running wild. Besides the change in rhythm, it really wasn’t as loud as it should have been.

“Why is…” Dick murmured, worry coloring his tone.

Tim hesitated. “The heartbeat is too irregular, isn't it?”

“Forgive me for being blunt,” Alfred said, keeping the ultrasound wand in place like he was worried about what would have happened if they stopped listening. Bruce was desperately thankful for it. “The pup is dying.”

And if he hadn’t been Batman, always in control, he would have gotten sick all over the floor.

“The heartbeat is too irregular, too weak,” the Beta went on and the heartbeat slowed down significantly as soon as he closed his mouth, almost as it was proving him right. “Mister Hood has lost too much blood. I cannot check his pupils,” he explained and Damian left his dam’s hand to put his on the helmet, indecisiveness clear on his face. “But I imagine if he was to wake up now he would still be in a semi-feral state, which does not help the pup. The abdominal bleeding is worsening.”

Through the ultrasound, the heart skipped a beat, before coming back slower than ever. Alfred sighed. “I am afraid we will lose both of them if we do not find a way to stabilize them,” he declared, voice tight and frown heavy with sorrow. “We may already be too late, unless…” he trailed off, looking directly at Bruce – who finally understood what his father figure was hinting at.

Slowly, he moved to stand beside the Beta, near Red Hood’s chest, where that Y in display kept bringing to the surface memories of Jason’s small, broken body, and he hesitated before putting a hand on his heart. It was running wild, even if the man was unconscious.

“I do not understand,” Damian growled, frustrated, and Bruce chuffed lowly to calm him down.

“We do not need more medicine, Master Damian,” Alfred explained, “we need instinct. Something that tells his body, and the pup’s, that they are safe now.”

It was Tim, then, to call the pack Alpha’s attention with a grunt. “It’s not something you come back from, B.”

Damian snarled. “I do not-”

“If B bites Red Hood – not a mating bite, of course, a pack-bonding one –, it might strengthen both him and the pup,” Dick explained as he put a hand on his little brother’s shoulder. “It could save their lives.”

Tim moved his weight from one foot to the other. “Hood could also react badly. He’s not our biggest fan.”

“He wants the pup to live,” Dick argued, then he met Bruce’s eyes and swallowed. “He reminds me of… I can’t… We did this, B. We didn’t mean to, but it’s no excuse. This is on us.”

The pup’s heartbeat stuttered, before coming back even fainter than before, and the whole pack shivered in unison for the immediate fear that traveled between all of them through the bonds. Damian whined, high pitched and terrified, and after removing his scent-blocking patch he plastered himself on his dam’s belly, like he could cover the baby in it – his brother? – and protect him from the world. His scent was sweet and sour at the same time, probably not controlled enough to smell as reassuring as he wanted it to be, and Bruce’s heart clenched at seeing his kid like that. When Dick and Tim took off their patches as well, the whole Cave was quickly submerged in the protectiveness of the pack’s scent.

“I’m afraid the time to ponder is limited, Master Bruce,” Alfred murmured, eyes glued to the screen attached to the ultrasound machine. 

A bond wasn’t something to create lightly. It meant fully accepting a criminal into their pack, it meant that with one bite their whole perception of the Omega would change, it meant becoming a family. Protecting and scenting the man during his pregnancy, taking care of the pup because they too would be pack, once born. It meant opening their bonds, their house, their lives.

But wasn’t that what Bruce had decided already? Hadn’t he promised himself he’d try for Damian? 

Alfred, of course, was right. There wasn’t time to think and let indecisiveness lead him, not when two lives were at stake – because of him. Because he had shown his teeth instead of lending a hand. He had hurt him, instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. He had chased instead of listening.

And yet he couldn’t choose by himself, pack Alpha or not, so he looked at Damian’s red eyes and nodded. “I will give him a bond, if you agree.”

He had not listened nor he had asked, and all that time his pup had a dam in his same city, a dam he clearly loved: a dam he was now on the verge of losing.

Bruce didn’t want to take another choice away from him.

Damian swallowed under his gaze, both obviously taken aback by his words and traumatized by the entire night, League’s training and all, and Bruce felt another wave of guilt squeeze his chest. The boy’s hands went back to the red helmet the Omega was wearing to protect his identity, shaking lightly as he cradled it. “I want him to live,” he whispered. “I demand you do it, father.”

And that was enough.

Bruce nodded and felt his teeth ache with the need to sink in the tender neck of the wounded Omega as his instinct, he realized suddenly, had been trying to tell him all along – and it wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t a mating bond, the one the Alpha in him fought to create. It was a pure desire to protect, to claim as family, as pup even, and it reminded him of the first time he had seen Jason, a little thing with his chin raised high in defiance like they couldn’t both hear his stomach grumble in hunger. 

He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop thinking about him that night – except that it was cruelly evident, wasn’t it? The words, the accent, the scar. The scent.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

He leaned forward, caging the Omega’s body with a hand on the gurney over each shoulder, his mouth stopping a few inches from his scent gland. Only one bite and everything would change.

But before he could do it, Damian’s voice, clear and shocking like a bucket of ice water, echoed in the silent Cave. “He resents that you did not avenge him. He resents that you replaced him and put another child in danger.”

Then the pup finally removed the helmet. 

Jason’s face laid bare for everyone to see.

And Bruce bit down.

Chapter Text

A bond snapping was one of the most painful feelings a person could experience in their lives. In rare instances it could happen on purpose, especially in cases of abuse when the victim decided to cut ties with the abuser, or other extreme circumstances rooted in trauma, but it mainly happened through death.
The pain was excruciating either way, of course; there was something, however, in the way a loss could take your breath away, especially if it was sudden and not the peaceful end of a slow disease, that was simply unbearable.

If it was between mates, it could even send the survivor in a state of last-longing shock.

Bruce had felt it three times, in his life, in two different moments. The first, with the murder of his parents.

The second, with his son.

The bond had snapped with Jason’s death and the pain had brought the great Batman to his knees, gasping for air because it was simply too much – the echo of something that had been so bright and strong, even through differences and arguments, that had turned into dust in a second.

He would have never forgotten that feeling. The aching emptiness that never went away where the bond should have been was a continuous reminder of that night, sure, but the blinding pain he had experienced at the exact moment Jason had died had been like nothing he had faced before, not even with his parents. Bruce had been their pup and losing them, with the aggravation that they were also his pack Alpha and his pack Omega, had been devastating.

Jason, though? Jason had been his. He had bitten him, he had made him part of his pack. Bruce had been his pack Alpha, his father, and it was his teeth that had bonded the pup to him, his den he had opened up, his cape he had covered him with. 

Jason had been his pup, his sweet, kind puppy, with eyes full of wonder and a mind starving for knowledge the same way his body had been for food, with the magic he could see in the mission and the mantle, with the sweetness he’d ooze when he’d climb in his bed after a nightmare and purr, warm and loved and loving and safe.

The snap of that bond had felt like Bruce couldn’t have imagined even in his nightmares. 

Even before that, however, biting someone had never been a thing he’d do light-heartedly. Dick had been the first one to move that instinct in him, Damian the last, and while he wasn’t sure he was done with expanding the pack through the adoption of pups in need, because he couldn’t turn his back on them more than he could kill, Red Hood had never been in his plans. Choosing to bite him had been a desperate hail Mary to save his and his baby’s life, maybe a way of fixing things with Damian as well, but now?

When his youngest had removed the crime lord’s red helmet, Bruce had barely seen the face hiding behind it – he hadn’t needed to, not when the scent-blocking patch had finally given up and unglued from the Omega’s neck, not when every single thing had added up to a shocking discovery.

A part of him, of course, the detective, the vigilante who had been through so much, had thought about a clone. Clayface. A trick of the mind. A play of some sort.

Except that the other part, the Alpha in him, the father, the protector, the man who had lost his pup, the one who had no word for himself because there was no name for a parent losing his child and he was an orphan but that was so much worse, that Bruce… bit him.

And there was no new bond crawling in the empty space between him and Red Hood to meet in the middle, no new string tying them with the thinness of two strangers, no new connection to require time for them to become used to it.

It was Jason’s bond, snapping back to life with the brightness of a supernova. The sharpness of a blade. 

He could feel it everywhere, in his throat, his lungs, his heart, even if the mark on the Omega’s neck had already stopped bleeding; he could feel it all over, burning and blinding and so, so strong.

There was no need to question the man’s face, his body, his true intentions. He wasn’t a clone, he wasn’t Clayface, he wasn’t a trick of the mind or a play of some sort. Not Red Hood, not an enemy. Not an unknown Omega.

He was Bruce’s pup, back into his arms.

Where he had always belonged.

“Dad?” Dick called him, voice uncharacteristically small as he took a step forward. The fact that he had called Bruce like that meant more than the younger Alpha probably realized, even more than the shock clearly painted over his entire face.

Tim was behind him, staring at the sleeping man on the gurney. “Is it… Jason?”

Alfred was still as a statue, but his hands shook a little where he was carefully putting a bandage on a graze of Red Hood’s thigh, his eyes wet under the weight of what was happening.

Bruce nodded, throat tight as tears ran down his cheeks and landed on Jason’s neck. Damian was still standing guard and when they looked at each other the pup nodded with a heaviness that allowed the Alpha to see what truly lay behind it – because Damian was confirming him he was right, he was thanking him for biting him and making him pack once more, and he was conceding him the role of Jason’s protector.
Bruce read it on his face and felt it in the bond, alight like all the others thanks to the new addition to the pack. He was recognizing him as their father and most of all as the pack Alpha.

“He’s alive,” Dick whispered. He raised a trembling hand to squeeze Jason’s, then bent over to kiss his knuckles with a broken sob. “My Little Wing.”

“I didn’t know he was an Omega,” Tim pointed out then, dumbfounded, like that was the shocking part and not the coming back from the dead.

Except that it was enough. Enough for cold sweat to run down Bruce’s spine, because he… he had almost…

He straightened up, walked with quick, long strides to the nearest trashcan and promptly threw up.

“Here, Master Bruce,” came Alfred’s calm voice when he finally stopped gagging, before he lent him a paper towel and some mouthwash to clean himself up.

“I almost killed him and his pup,” he murmured as he complied.

There was no forgiveness for that, was there? No coming back.

His son had somehow come back from the grave and yet Bruce could never come back from that night. That chase. That kick.

His pup was going to have a pup and Bruce had almost killed them both.

“Jason’s Red Hood,” Tim went on, eyebrows still high in shock. 

“I almost-” Bruce choked again, before going back to his Omega son and passing his fingers through the black and white hair – the white strand meaning something he really didn’t want to imagine.

Dick took a deep breath, then dried his cheeks with the back of one hand. “You also saved him.”

“I did this,” Bruce argued and shook his head. “I don’t get to be the hero now.”

“You get,” Damian snapped at that point, imitating his words, “to do better.”

By their sides, Alfred pushed the ultrasound probe back on Jason’s still flat belly and the sound that filled the Cave sent a ripple of pure relief down the pack’s bonds: the pup’s heart was strong, now, stronger than ever.

And when Bruce kissed Jason’s forehead and closed his eyes, he could feel the shadow of a new bond forming, incomplete because the pup wasn’t born yet, but a promise nonetheless of the future they would one day have.

I promise, he thought, I’ll do better. I’ll protect you. 

Both of you.

Damian pushed his head under Jason’s chin, scenting his dam or rather making his sleeping body scent him, and Bruce put a hand on the back of his youngest pup’s neck to gently scruff him, not in reprimand but as a comforting gesture to ground him.

He could have asked him why the secrecy, how could he have lived with him for so long without telling the pack that Jason was still alive, or how he had come back – although considering the white hair Bruce was one step away from hunting down Talia –, but he knew how conflicting it must have been, to be a pup with a dam who asked for silence and an Alpha in the dark.

“Thank you for protecting him,” Bruce said. “You did very good.”

Damian blinked a couple of times, then straightened up with barely hidden pride. It only lasted a few seconds, though, before he deflated. “I did not even know he had a pup.”

“Another,” Bruce corrected him. 

The idea of his son being his other son’s dam felt a little unnatural to him, because they were both his pups and they should have been brothers, while now they were brothers but parent and child too, even if still being both Bruce’s kids. In the end, however, it didn’t matter, not when they were both with him now, both safe.

Damian nodded slowly and pressed his head under Jason’s chin once more; when Bruce put a hand in his hair, the pup started purring.

Tim cleared his voice, clearly aware that he was interrupting a somewhat intimate moment and yet the same calculating gaze in his eyes that the entire pack was so used to seeing. “Damian,” he called him.

The pup grunted to get him to go on, refusing to move. 

“Do you know who the sire is?”

That caused a reaction. He straightened up, muscles tense once more, and Bruce’s instinct to calm him down again was quickly drowned by worry at his stance. He looked down at Jason’s neck and turned carefully his head to check each side; there was no claiming bite, not even one faded into a thin scar, nothing but Bruce’s already healing teeth marks – but it didn’t mean Jason didn’t have a mate, just not an official one. Maybe they weren’t ready yet and the pregnancy had been an accident. Maybe it had been a one-night stand. Maybe…

“I do not know,” Damian replied with a deep frown. He couldn’t fool them, though, not when he was clearly thinking about something.

“They could be worried,” Dick tried to convince him. “Any Alpha would look for his pregnant Omega.”

Damian snarled, lips curved in a threat. “Todd belongs to no one.”

His tone was borderline possessive, in a soon-to-be-Alpha with an unmated dam fashion could be, and Bruce knew his expression had softened as it often did when confronted with his children’s more regular behaviors; they were vigilantes, they fought criminals every night to protect the innocents, so it was nice to know some things were so… normal.

Every pup was protective of their pack, after all. A pup with a clear future Alpha designation, with an Omega parent who had no mark on his neck? There was no way Damian wouldn’t feel territorial. And that “Todd belongs to no one”? It might as well have been “he belongs to me”.

Bruce chuffed to comfort him, to make sure no argument would explode between his sons, and maybe also to remind him of who the pack Alpha was.

Damian huffed, but stopped showing his teeth. “I do not know who the sire is,” he repeated.

“So what do you know?” Bruce asked him, because something in those reactions had rang a bell of alarm in his mind. 

He put a hand in Jason’s hair, to spread his scent – and remind himself that he was real. That he was back, he was safe, he was home.

“I have a theory,” the pup mumbled with a scowl. “But it is certainly not my story to tell.”

Then he promptly turned to stare all of them down and put his hands on his hips, like he wasn’t the shortest of everyone in the room but an intimidating force. Like he wasn’t the youngest and therefore the lowest in rank. “Shall we bring my dam to a more comfortable bed now, or should he rot here on a gurney?”

Alfred frowned in disapproval, while Tim rolled his eyes and Dick chuckled wetly.

Bruce, amused, huffed. “Let’s get him to the medbay.”

It was a dream, it had to be. No place could ever be that warm, that safe, no scent that familiar and protective. It was… nice. More than nice, even – the kind of feeling he didn’t really want to lose by waking up. Dreams like that were so unusual for him, now, that it was worth treasuring this one until the moment came to actually move and open his eyes, going back to the cold life Jason had crawled to from the grave.

He could feel someone by his right side, presumably sitting on a chair while he was lying down, and he turned his head to follow that presence, like a sunflower would move to look for the sun; a hand passed through his hair, then, big and full of callouses and familiar, and Jason sighed in relief, eyes still closed. He could smell his pack Alpha, his protective scent all over the room, as an astonishing amount of love ran down the bond from him in a simple, primitive message: you’re safe. You’re home.

There was a weight in Jason’s throat. It didn’t hurt him, but he felt it burn in something akin to desperation before he unconsciously pushed himself a little more against the hand in his hair and a soft grumble of approval and affection echoed in reply. He lost any tension in his body, then, because his pack Alpha was there and he had accepted Jason and he would keep him safe. He was also talking, his tone calm and reassuring, and even though the words couldn’t reach him through the sleepiness his mind was still submerged in, the Omega sank into the bed underneath him with another soft sigh.

Only then he noticed his left arm was slightly parted from his torso to allow a small body to press against him; he raised a hand, still refusing to open his eyes because he was desperately clinging to the warm embrace of sleep and peaceful dreams, and blindly put it on the little thing glued to his side – a pup, his instinct told him, lead by scent and bond alike. A pup with his nose pressed against his bared neck and small hands gripping his left arm and his opposite hip.

Jason knew him. He knew him and loved him and there was a new scent in the air, now, as sweet as honey, as hearty as a dam’s embrace. The Omega opened his mouth, chirping lowly.

When Damian, because that was his pup’s name, replied with a soft chirp of his own, Jason’s hand sank into his hair and he cradled his head with the open palm, putting the slightest pressure with his fingers to force him to move away from his neck. He pushed him down, then, not needing to see to know perfectly well where he wanted the pup to go, and he simultaneously pressed himself on the pack Alpha’s kind pets.

Stopping his hand for a second, Jason let Damian rest his forehead on his pec and take in the sweet scent in the air, and at that point he didn’t need to do anything else; the pup’s lips quickly found his nipple, opening like a flower to take it in and lap at it hesitantly for no more than an instant. 

When Damian actually latched, pulling at the milk with a fervor that reeked of some sort of need for reassurance, Jason gasped quietly, a little overwhelmed by the warmth of the suction and the intimacy of the bond between dam and pup. Milk flowed freely, in a copious amount that had his Omega instinct flare up in pride, to the point that a drop appeared on his right breast, the one Damian wasn’t greedily sucking.

A whine tore out of him.

He hadn’t meant to let it out, but it only grew stronger when the slowly mounting distress pushed him to open his eyes to the harsh lights of some sort of hospital – and he knew that room, he had known it as a kid, after getting hurt on patrol, hadn’t he?

He immediately shut his eyes again, whining once more. 

“It- -rig- -son,” someone said, the words muffled because Jason was an Omega and he knew for a fact he had pups, he just felt it, so why was only one feeding? He pressed Damian to his chest a little more, urging him to take what he needed, and he felt a wave of worry from other bonds at his persisting cries.

Of course: the bonds.

Jason could feel a specific one, a pup – not really, maybe, already presented even, although just so, but did it really matter? He was still so young. So needy.

The Omega took the bond and tugged as hard as he could.

Someone dropped something not too far and steps followed and there were voices, a young one and his pack Alpha and another Alpha and he didn’t know what they were saying under his whines and his pressing need to have his pups safe in his arms – or in his belly? Was the missing one still in him? Except that one of his breasts was getting drained by an almost milk-drunk Damian and the other one was still so uncomfortably full, so he tugged at one of the bonds again.

“-Don- if I -ould,” someone murmured as the bed on his right side dipped. 

Jason whined again and pushed his head against the pack Alpha’s hand, scared that he’d stop petting him now that there was a warm body squeezing in between them; the man moved a little, his chair scraping against the floor, but never let go.
“-hate -e if -ew.”

With a small growl, Jason decided it was enough. Enough talking, enough hesitating, enough complaining: he was the Omega and he had decided pups didn’t get to be so fussy. The hand he wasn’t pressing Damian on his breast with shot out to the other pup’s neck, reaching behind it to scruff him with a certain intention; he felt a bone-deep satisfaction when his young body dropped half on top of him, going limp with the endorphins. Some sort of fond amusement ran down his other bonds, but Jason didn’t care, not when grabbing the disobedient pup and pushing his nipple in his mouth was now so easy.

The little runt didn’t suck, however, and the Omega chuffed to entice a reaction, before pushing him down more insistently.

In the end, only a little patience was needed, because as soon as the pup finally gave an experimental suck, he started pulling milk with an enthusiasm that was just on the verge of becoming too violent and tore from Jason a satisfied whine.

He was doing good, he knew it. His pack Alpha was petting him and almost drugging him with the amount of pride and love he was sending down the bond, in a ripple effect that had the entire pack glowing and relaxed as never before. Someone safe, a Beta maybe, was moving silently in the room and another Alpha was keeping watch standing at the entrance, allowing Jason to feel safer than he could remember in a long time. The two pups feeding from his body were plastered on each side, lips moving and tongues working to gulp down the continuous stream, and their pure contentment was as dizzying as Jason’s own.

He was fine. He was safe with his pack.

He was home.

… Except that Jason didn’t have a home, not anymore. Definitely not a pack.

His eyes snapped open, heart beating wildly in his chest and his ears, and he took in his surroundings: he was in the medbay of the fucking Batcave, on a bed, without his helmet on. Shit, shit, shit, they knew he was the Red Hood, didn’t they?

Understanding hit him like a train. They had chased him, he remembered it. They had… they had…

And now Dick was staring at him from the door, expression broken, and Alfred was near an ultrasound machine and… and Bruce was sitting by Jason’s right, fully aware of who he was, what he was, what he had done. 

A whine echoed in the room and it took him a second to realize it was coming from him.

Panic flooded his veins when Bruce jumped up to cradle his cheeks with his hands, which Jason dislodged in terrified movements. Immediately a wave of love seeped through the bond with the Alpha and his breath got caught in his throat when every other bond lighted up and did the same. Alfred’s calm reassurance, Dick’s warmth, Damian’s puppy protectiveness and even- the Replacement, the fucking Replacement was trying to comfort him, and Jason would have shown his teeth if he hadn’t felt something else in that connection. The kid… was exactly that: a kid. Barely out of puphood.
And then he looked down, to the weight on each side of his chest… 

Tim was staring at him with his lips still open, only a few inches from his red nipple, a few drops of milk on the corner of his mouth; his eyes were glassy and a little lost, like Damian’s when he’d feed a lot after not nursing for a while, which Jason confirmed when he moved his gaze to the youngest pup. He was blinking slowly at him, still latched but not sucking, and while he was frowning, probably because of his dam's fear, as soon as the Omega calmed down he did as well. He settled back a few seconds later, giving a few sucks that made Jason jump in surprise – although the following rush of endorphins allowed him to relax even further, his biology fighting and winning against his mind. 

The Rep-the other pup, when he turned to look at him, was already studying him. He seemed to be a little more lucid than before, even with the line of spit between his lips and the Omega’s breast, and he felt…

Fuck, he couldn’t believe he could feel him. 

A bond, they had bonded him!

And while Jason wasn’t sure what to do, how to react, he also couldn’t stand for Tim to stare at him that way, he couldn’t stop the uneasiness of his instinct in front of the young Beta’s wariness and fear and longing; so he grabbed him by the hair of the back of his head, this time harshly in a way he was sure he hadn’t been before, and pushed him down again to latch.

Then he shot a look at Alfred with cheeks red in shame, at Dick, whose wet eyes he could barely force himself to meet, and finally turned his head to Bruce.

“You bit me,” he gritted out, teeth bared to snap at the first attempt to touch him again. He probably didn’t look that dangerous, with two pups hanging from his breasts, but he felt through the bonds the three adults’ wariness. Their shame. 

… Their joy.

And a flash of despair from the Alpha.

“M-my pup,” Jason whispered then, panic once again finding his throat and locking it.

“The pup is fine,” Bruce quickly reassured him. “You’re both going to be fine.”

A tear slipped up from the Omega’s wavering control and ran down his temple, before the pack Alpha hesitantly moved a finger to dry it; then he stroked his hair, like he was something precious and not Red Hood, someone they loved and not someone they had tried to hurt and capture.

Bruce bent to kiss his head, pure affection slipping through the bond. “You’re home,” he murmured.

Jason closed his eyes. “No, I’m not.”

But he didn’t move.

Chapter Text

The next time Jason woke up, only Bruce was in the room.

His breast ached, his nipples sensitive under the light blanket covering his torso, but there was no weight on his sides, no warm pups tucked under his arms, no hungry mouths sucking the only good thing he probably had in him. No soft purr, no wet sounds of lips smacking and throats working to gulp down milk, no fingers digging into his skin.

No hands cradling his body like he was something worth saving.

Just a wave of nausea growing in his gut. A dreaded sense of clarity.

And a crushing, unbearable silence.

Jason turned to the side, giving Bruce his back in a decision that should have made every kind of alarm bell in his brain scream and that was welcomed as a safe and natural choice instead, and he desperately tried not to throw up. He curled up on himself, using his bent arm as a pillow where he hid his face.

He had never felt so trapped in his own skin.

Breathe, he told himself. You survived worse.

A tear rolled down his temple, uncaring.

He could feel the bond, just below the surface in a way he hadn’t experienced in years, surely not after dying, if not to Damian – which had been impossible to stop, because nursing a pup always had that effect, especially on an unbonded, young omega with no pack left. Maybe it was because of how long it had been, or maybe the Waynes were simply stronger than he thought, or he weaker than he would have liked, but Jason couldn’t even close those bonds, shutting them down behind a wall of strict control in order to avoid letting his emotions slip through; while it was something impossible to maintain in the long run, it really wasn’t that hard for short periods of time… and yet he couldn’t. Which meant that, in a fetal position and entirely focused on the ties with the Alphas, Betas and pup of the pack, Jason could feel their worry, their tentative push of feelings such as comfort and safety and love, their guilt underneath it all. It also meant, unfortunately, that they could feel him as well.

And unless he snapped the bonds completely, there was no way for him to stop it.

The simple idea almost made him gag. If there was one way to make sure the hormones that Bruce’s bite had pumped into him to save him and the pregnancy stopped working, that was it. 

And Jason… Jason wanted his pup to live. 

Pride and love flooded him from all corners of the pack and he growled, lips curving in a threat even though there was no one in the room except for the Alpha sitting behind him, and he snapped his teeth to get them to back off. They were everywhere, he could feel the bond just as much as he could feel his own mind.

They were inside him, bright and strong, and at the very center, Bruce.

Anger, pain, desperation, longing, fear, feelings of abandonment, uncertainty, betrayal, love, hope, self-loathing; Jason was drowning in his own emotions, gasping out a low whine because it was too much.

And in between all of that, the burning awareness that he was no longer in control. That they took the choice away from him – again.

How come in his life he never got to decide for himself?

Jason remembered everything, now, the chase, the fight, Damian’s courage, the crane… the nursing.

For once, he would have liked to have a say, yeah.

“You bit me,” he gritted out, trying to cover his swirling feelings with anger even though he knew how well the pack Alpha would have been able to read him anyway. “You bonded me to you all. You-” he stopped to laugh, no real humor in his voice. “I couldn’t fight back and you took advantage of it.”
He felt Bruce flinch behind him, but he refused to turn around and face him, curling even more on himself.  “It was supposed to be my choice.”

“You were hurt,” the Alpha murmured, a desperate note in his voice and in the bond.

“No shit,” Jason grunted, “it’s not like I kicked myself.”

Pure regret and self-hate flooded the bond, forcing a whine out of the Omega even though a part of him thought it was what the man deserved. “You should have let me die,” he whispered after a beat, although he wasn’t sure if he actually thought it or if it was a childish wish to be corrected.

A deep rumble filled the medbay. “I couldn’t. You’re my son.”

“Not anymore.”

“Always,” Bruce said, something barely human in his voice.

Jason scoffed. “I’m Red Hood.”

“Yes,” the pack Alpha agreed, “and you’re my son.”

Was that why he had bitten him like he belonged to him? Or did he see his former pup as a thing to be claimed?
Certainly not a person to be trusted, right? How could anyone in the pack ever trust him again? See him as he really was and not as the milking, murderer Omega?

“Did you know?” Jason asked then, blinking tears and letting them fall on the arm he was using as a pillow.

“That you were Red Hood? No, I-”

“That I was pregnant.”

Silence stretched for a few seconds, then, to the point that Jason simply couldn’t take the lack of answer and decided to turn around, going immediately back to a fetal position but this time facing his father. 

The man was… devastated, there was no other way to describe his expression and the twirling emotions he was allowing the whole pack to feel – and why he wasn’t shielding himself was a mystery. Was he trying to even the field out of fairness, or did he just want to be honest and open for once?

“No,” Bruce croaked, eyes studying every inch of his son’s half-hidden face. “I didn’t know, chum, if I had… I didn’t know, puppy, I swear.”

And Jason, who hadn’t been a pup for years, couldn’t stop a sob from coming out of him at that name.

Bruce didn’t hesitate, not even for a second; he left the chair and lowered himself on the bed, hugging the Omega to his chest and pressing his arms on his back to pull him tighter, letting out a soothing rumble that screamed of belonging and love and home. Jason shook violently in that hold, an involuntary reaction he simply couldn’t stop, and whined loudly.

“You’re safe now,” Bruce promised as he tucked the Omega’s head under his chin to scent him, to press him against his own scent glands and hide him from the world all at once.

“I’m-” not what you wanted me to be, Jason tried to say, but the words got locked in his throat and he trembled.

From somewhere in the Manor, Damian sent a wave of protectiveness down the bond and the Omega barely stopped himself from calling him with a chirp.

Bruce hesitated, probably feeling how deeply he was missing his presence. 

“Is this why you bit me?” Jason growled then, pushing his open mouth against the Alpha’s throat in a not-so-implicit threat. “So that I could play the part of the dam for the pups?”

He pressed lightly his teeth on the soft skin, but Bruce didn’t stop him, didn’t push him away, didn’t even scruff him to make him submit. “I was trying to save you.”

“Do you even know what that bite meant, old man, what you did? That’s not healing, that’s claiming. That’s taking.”

“I-”

“You ruined me.”

Bruce took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for what happened, Jaylad, I truly am. I’ll spend the rest of my life apologizing, if that’s what you need, but I want to make one thing clear: you are not ruined. You are perfect in any way-”

“How can you say that?!” Jason interrupted him, a little hysterical, and pushed himself back to look at him in the eyes. “I’m an Omega. Big bad Red Hood with milk dripping down his tits, claimed into a pack who doesn’t really care-”

“Of course we care!”

“-an Omega with hands covered in blood, looking like an Alpha but-”

“Jason, enough,” Bruce stopped him with a growl. It wasn’t a command, nor the bond between them showed any kind of forceful restraint; just a pure, human reaction of a protective father in front of a son whose feelings kept swinging between self-loathing and fear. 

“You replaced me, you put my pup in danger every night,” the Omega went on, tears running freely as he raised himself in a sitting position, “you didn’t kill the Joker for me because of your precious morals, but you’ll bond me against my will? You let me nurse your new sons, feed them like I’m… And you look at me like I’m some miracle?! Admit it, Alpha, you don’t care if I’m alive or dead, as long as I’m useful. As long as you can control me.”

Now sitting up on the bed as well, Bruce was staring at him with his mouth open in shock, a weird shade of green on his face, and Jason slowly moved his fingers to prepare himself to slash, showing his teeth because he just wanted to bite, to sink into his father’s flesh and maybe even his gland, just to make him see how it felt, to be forced-

Tears ran down his cheeks as he covered his belly with an arm.

“I killed my pup’s sire,” he said, bluntly.

Bruce swallowed, then nodded, something akin to understanding haunting his expression and the bond for a second. Slowly, oh so slowly, he raised a hand to cup Jason’s cheek and the Omega felt a rush of hate for the way he immediately leaned into the touch. He had just been without a pack for so long, without his pack, without his pack Alpha. His dad.
And now, with his body full of pregnancy and bond hormones, he simply wanted to let the man hold him tightly and find a nest to burrow into. Cut the Alpha’s chest to be able to get under his skin and never leave his heart again.

He sobbed, still staring into his father’s eyes, and Bruce stroked his thumb on his cheek in a soothing gesture.

“I never replaced you, Jaylad. I almost killed myself because I couldn’t bear the idea of never seeing you again,” he explained then, voice rough making him sound more like Batman than usual. “I let you nurse Tim and Damian because it seemed like you all wanted and needed it, but you are so much more than your designation. There’s nothing wrong with being an Omega in the first place and it doesn’t make you weak in my eyes, or wrong,” he added, like he was determined to reply to every accusation, every hateful thought his son had both on him and himself. “Nursing is normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Red Hood isn’t weak because of it. Ask the pack, you’re so skilled, Jaylad, so strong. That’s why I-”

He hesitated, but Jason nudged him to go on without thinking. He needed to know.

Bruce took a deep breath. “I chased you and I hurt you because you’re the first person I’ve fought in a long time who actually made me doubt my abilities, and that scared me.”

Jason’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected that confession.

“I don’t condone murder, but I did try to kill the Joker. If I… If I had succeeded, I don’t know where I’d be now,” the Alpha declared, making the Omega flinch and inhale sharply, “and I’d never put the pups in danger if I wasn’t positive that they would go out without me if I didn’t allow them to follow.”

Then he chuckled drily, no trace of real humor on his face. “I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you, the same way I’ll never forgive myself for not saving you in Ethiopia. But this time? This time I could save you, I could fix it. I just couldn’t lose you again, Jaylad, I’m not strong enough.”
He dropped his hand, which Jason immediately missed, but Bruce was so clearly lost in his words that the loss of warmth and reassurance in the bond went unnoticed.

“I look at you like you’re a miracle because you are, pup. It wasn’t about control, or usefulness. It was about making sure you’d get the long life I’ve always wanted you to have.”

Bruce cradled his face into his hands again, before nosing his hair and down his face, until he could breathe deeply on the Omega’s neck, where the bite that had made him pack again was already fading. “You are my miracle, Jaylad. You came home.”

And Jason closed his eyes, overwhelmed. “I didn’t,” he whispered, feeling yet another tear roll down his cheek. “Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m really alive.”

Bruce hugged him to his chest, letting out comforting rumbles as he murmured reassurance after reassurance, and Jason let himself be moved and lowered again on the bed, while in his mind he mourned the person he had been and who he’d never be again.

Maybe he should have just jumped from that damn crane.

“Stay,” Bruce begged him and held him desperately tight.

And Jason stayed. But he didn’t come home.

As soon as Red Hood had been brought to the Cave, especially after seeing Damian’s protectiveness, Bruce had asked Alfred to prepare him a room; the request hadn’t changed after the identity reveal, because everything that had belonged to the second Robin had been kept as the day he had left the Manor for the last time and the pack Alpha couldn’t bring himself to touch anything, not even knowing his boy was back.

Of course they had plenty of space to turn another spare room in the family wing into Jason’s new one, so while he rested under Bruce’s eyes they picked the one closest to Damian’s, after his murderous look at any kind of different suggestion. That’s where the pack Alpha carefully walked him to, when Jason had finally calmed a little and he had eaten something.

Bruce put him to his new bed like he was a little kid, then, and stroked his hair until his breath evened out and he fell asleep once more. After he had made sure to spread his Alpha scent on him and have the Omega’s on himself, he finally stood up and left him to rest.

And found himself in front of his children as soon as he closed the door behind him.

“I demand to be let in,” Damian said, threatening even with dark bags under his eyes. Bruce felt a wave of affection for his youngest, who had been through so much in so little time, so he didn’t allow him time to prepare before he grabbed him gently by a shoulder and pulled him into an embrace.

It spoke volumes on how the pup was really feeling, bond or not, that the pup didn’t push him away and let his father hug him.

“He’s sleeping now,” Bruce told him once they separated. “Let’s give him the chance to choose.”

Dick nodded, eyes red-rimmed but understanding, and Tim raised his shoulder as he took a deep breath, then let them fall with a soft hum. 

Damian was the only one who growled, low and sad more than angry. “He’s my dam.”
“I know, chum,” Bruce murmured, cupping his cheek, “but let him call for you, alright?”

He bent down to kiss his air and rub his scent on him. “I’m sure he will.”

Except that, as it often happened with his children, Bruce ended up being wrong.

In a totally predictable Omega behavior, Jason made a nest in his room, taking spare pillows and blankets from the closet and arranging them in a corner of the floor with a frustrated huff, until he growled at his Alpha to get into the room and spread his protective scent everywhere. He refused to leave it for food, only moving from the nest to go the en suite bathroom – which meant not needing to get out of the border made by the bedroom’s door –, and eating from trays Bruce would bring every few hours. 

Because since walking in, Jason only allowed him to enter what he had basically turned into a den. While firmly keeping outside the older members of the pack, Alfred and Dick, might have been expected, the fact that he didn’t want Tim and especially Damian to get close either was surprising and not really comforting. 

Bruce wasn’t an expert on carrying Omegas, he’d freely admit it, but he knew enough to be worried that his newly bonded pack Omega was somewhat rejecting anyone except for his pack Alpha, although without officially rescinding the connection. Which meant anyone could feel the rollercoaster of emotions he was experiencing and he, in return, knew perfectly well what his brothers were going through. Bruce would see it every single time he’d walk into the room and leave his other kids outside; Jason would shake his head at the Alpha’s silent request, the others would involuntarily send a stabbing wave of guilty acceptance – Dick –, worried unease – Tim – and the worst one of all, Damian’s frustration and rejection and pure longing. Like clockwork, the Omega would whine, loud and distressed, which would then send Bruce’s pups into a frenzy, even if still respecting his wish to keep out.

A nest was a precious place to be invited in, after all, and pushing in was both frowned upon and a blatant show of disrespect.

Still, it broke the Alpha’s heart to feel all those emotions swimming around without being able to help. Frankly, he was surprised he was allowed to be so close to Jason in the first place… and yet not that much, because the Omega kept tugging him to lay down and moving him until he could basically hide against his chest and Bruce would hold him tightly, making sure to be between his pup and the door to give him yet another reassurance of safety.

He knew Jason wasn’t pleased with himself. He could see it and especially feel it in the bond, how much the Omega hated to be this needy in front of an Alpha, probably more because it was Bruce in particular, and at the same time he was really glad the kid was accepting this instinct and not fighting it. The less stress the pregnancy would go through – especially after how much it already did –, the better.

He also knew that Jason’s constant refusal to have at the very least Damian by his side, Tim too if the way he had reacted instinctually meant anything, wasn’t helping his mood… nor his body’s reaction. Bruce could smell it all over him, could feel his discomfort in the bond, the swell under the skin every time they’d hug: the Omega’s breasts were full of milk. The pregnancy hormones had changed his body in preparation for the birth, the bite had anticipated the appearance of milk, and actually feeding two pups had kickstarted a bigger production, as soon as he had acknowledged their presence in the pack he had just joined. 

So now? Now Jason was dripping.

Bruce put down a few towels, which he swapped for new ones again and again, and helped the kid to change his shirt more often than not, all keeping his mouth shut on the topic after the first time he suggested him to nurse either Damian or Tim, or both, and earning a loud snarl in reply. 

Still, it didn’t change what was happening. Jason refused to feed the pups, crashed the breast pump the family bought as soon as the problem became more evident, and was only partially relieved after showering, a time Bruce knew for sure he was using to squeeze the liquid out with his own hands.

He was… in denial, maybe. Or dissociating.

… Or self-harming.

The idea almost brought a growl out of the Alpha, who hugged his son a little tighter as they rested in the nest – and he was lucky enough that Dick had mercifully agreed to take the role of Batman for a few nights, so that he wouldn’t have to leave Jason alone.

The air in the room was full of their scents, only tampered a little by the small plastic bag near the door, with a shirt for every other member of the pack, just in case the Omega wanted to add them to his nest; a honey-sweet note was now always present, too, hand in hand with the wet patches on Bruce’s chest where it was pressed against his pup’s. The scent of milk was strong and warm and pleasant, but worrying nonetheless.

An infection was probably around the corner, unless he could convince Jason to let them help – but how could he? How, when the only language he seemed ready to speak was physical touch with his pack Alpha and silence?

And the thing was: Bruce got it. He understood the pressing need to feel safe, to find a place to call home, a nest to hide in where no one would hurt you – but this was different. It wasn’t protection. It was isolation.

The kind of pain that, if left unchecked, could tear you from the inside. That would force you to bend under its weight. That would take your breath away.

Jason was using the nest and Bruce’s presence as a shield, even when his body reacted to Damian’s distress, or the milk in his chest became so much that even grazing a nipple would make him whine; he was ignoring it and, in the end, so was the Alpha.

He was just grateful that he had been allowed in, that he could hug his pup and scent him and make sure he was fine, that he wasn’t on the other side of the door like his sons, to the point that jeopardizing his role and position made Bruce’s stomach twirl uncomfortably. 

A part of him, hidden, even wondered if he had become Jason’s refuge for lack of an alternative, but he was quick to dismiss the thought and kiss his hair with a calming rumble. The Omega, deeply asleep, let out a soft sound that rippled through the bond and made the entire pack inhale in surprise. It wasn’t quite purring, because he would have to be completely at ease to do so; it was more of a hint of what it might one day become.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the sound stopped.

Jason had pressed himself against Bruce some more and he whined, before – still asleep – he covered his breast with an arm. Like that, he almost looked like he was trying to hold back something, whether it was shame or milk, and he whined again in the most pitiful way until the Alpha stroked his hair and murmured nonsensical words of comfort.

Bruce had bit Jason out of desperation and now it was hard to understand where instinct ended and forgiveness began, but for a little while longer they could stay like that. Listening to him breathe would be enough.

And although stopping himself from asking too much, too soon, was not easy, he was ready to try.

Sometimes, after all, sharing silence with someone was all it took.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Jason could hear them behind the closed door. Tim’s steps going up and down the hall, pacing in what his bond clearly showed was a mix of worry, longing and self-doubt, and Dick’s fingers tapping incessantly on the wooden floor because he was unable to stay still for more than a few seconds. Alfred’s calm voice as he tried in vain to get the kids to move from the door. Damian’s heart-breaking harsh breaths and swallowed whines, his puppy growls whenever someone would push him to go to the bathroom or the dining room.

With the exception of the butler, they all slept in the hallway. Jason heard them at all hours of the day, even taking turns at night after a whispered conversation about who’d stay in and who’d go out on patrol.

Bruce never left. Four days had passed since closing himself into his new room and the only time the Alpha would leave was to go to the bathroom and to check with his other kids; otherwise he’d step away from the nest only to get the tray of food from Alfred, opening the door just enough to do so.

His kindness, his attention when moving in the nest, his scent… they hurt Jason more than punches, sometimes.

He knew it all meant having a pack. Being safe, no longer alone.

Except that he had never asked to be one of them again, did he? He hadn’t asked for the bond, the warmth, Bruce’s hands in his hair and on his nape reaching out to soothe instead of strike. Maybe he had silently wanted it, sure, longed for it – for the pup, not himself, because he was Red Hood and he could deal with being a little lonely, okay?! –, but he hadn’t shown his neck in submission to get there, he hadn’t opened his mouth and asked Bruce to be his pack Alpha again, he hadn’t atoned for his choices nor for his mistakes, and the bond that should have made him feel less alone actually made him feel too exposed. Too seen.

His pain was leaking out from dozens of cracks into his carefully crafted persona and they were all witnessing it.

And why on Earth were they all outside his door, Jason wasn’t sure. Sooner or later they’d leave, he knew it; they were too smart not to realize he didn’t belong with them. One day they’d turn their backs on him and the protection would fade, the warmth would turn into icy isolation, because they’d finally tell him he had taken enough and their pity would run out, and Jason… Jason knew it made sense. He knew he had to expect it.

It just hurt him so badly that he found himself hugging his pregnant belly every time.

Because, frankly, he wasn’t sure what would have been worse: being kicked out, or kept there. Prisoner.

He didn’t know how to leave. Not in a physical sense, of course, although the idea of getting out through the window like the Manor hadn’t been his home once was a little distressing. He just didn’t know how to convince himself that being alone was the best course of action – and yet he’d feel like crawling out of his skin whenever Bruce told him he was home, he was back with his family, he was safe.

What a family, uh?

And the thing was, Jason understood the reason behind the bite. He even understood the reason behind the kick.

He just… he just wanted to choose something, for once in his life.

Bruce hugged him a little tighter when his distress bled through the bonds with the pack members. “You’re okay,” he murmured and Jason hid his face into his chest to hide the way he was showing his teeth.

Sometimes he just felt trapped.

Safety had never been a constant in his life, after all, and while the pack was protection, it was also control. Expectations. What if they never allowed him to go out again? What if they did and Red Hood disappointed them? What if he got used to being part of a family once more and they later decided he wasn’t worth the trouble?

He was basically a ticking bomb in the middle of their nest, after all, and the fact that they all seemed to ignore it, either unable to see the blood on his hands or simply refusing to acknowledge it, didn’t mean it would always be like that. 

They said instinct didn’t lie, but Jason’s kept betraying him, so how could he accept that Dick, for example, was keeping watch out of affection and not second Alpha’s duty? 

The bond was full of love, sure. But what if it was wrong? What if it was simple biology?

Maybe a new member of the pack was suffering and they all simply acted accordingly, no other reason needed than a primordial push to help. They called it nature, Jason called it a prison.

After all, biology had been what started the whole pup situation, right?

He flinched and squeezed his eyes tightly. He didn’t like thinking about that night.

In the end, they were all puppets following a script written in blood and hormones, and neither cared about what Jason really wanted.

No one ever did.

“I’m still me,” he whispered, needing to say it out loud so that his mind would quiet even just for a second.

Bruce stiffened, still hugging him to his chest, and bent a little to nose his hair. “Of course you are, Jaylad.”

“I’m…”

He let his voice die, a shaky breath coming out instead. He used to beg to present as anything but an Omega, knowing how dangerous it would be on the streets, and later on plagued by the uncertainty of his role as Robin; even then, though, he had never thought it was a bad designation. Just more vulnerable in his particular situation. 

Now it felt like it was mocking him. All the softness he was getting involuntarily used to, the feeling of being taken care of, of being loved, that was for people who hadn’t been beaten by a crowbar with laughter in their ears, for people who hadn’t clawed and crawled their way out of their fucking grave. For people who didn’t spend their nights shooting rapists’ heads and breaking human traffickers’ necks.

Red Hood was feared. He was respected. He was more than his biology.

But now? Now Jason could feel the small weight in his belly, the presence of a life forming day after day inside of him, the way instincts curled around the pup like a leash. His body was changing and he could barely look at it in the bathroom mirror, sometimes, because the reflection was his and it felt so different at the same time, even though it was too early for the pregnancy to actually show.

It wasn’t even dysphoria, not really.

It was… betrayal.

“Talk to me, chum,” came Bruce’s plea.

Jason shuddered when he felt drops of milk run down the side of his chest, gravity pulling them down from where he was lying on his side.

“I never wanted to be like this,” he confessed then, hiding his face a little more. “An Omega.”

A hand caressed his hair, warm and soothing. “There is nothing wrong with being an Omega, Jason, nothing,” he told him, calling him by his name in a way he didn’t often do. “I’ve heard you say so plenty of times, when you were-”

Robin?

“-younger. I know you’re for equal rights for everyone, that you never stopped protecting or fighting someone based on their designations.”

Jason snarled, almost indignant. “Of course not!”

“Then why are you different? Why do you give that courtesy to the whole world, but not yourself?”

“I never chose-”

“Nobody chooses their designation, chum,” Bruce explained with a purely parental patience. 

But I never chose anything, Jason thought. Only keeping the pregnancy and even then it was almost taken away from me.

That, he realized, and running away as a teenager… which ended with his death.

“I’m still Red Hood,” he declared, finally raising his head to look at the Alpha. “I will go out again, once the pup is born. You can’t decide I’m too weak to go out, now that you know I’m not an Alpha. You can’t-”

Bruce let out a soft, chastising growl. “I never said that. And you are not weak, you hear me?”
He cupped his face, staring into his eyes or directly into his weeping soul, Jason couldn’t tell. “You can do whatever you want, chum, I mean it. I…” he hesitated. “I just hope you’ll choose to have us in your life.”

“What about Red Hood?”

Bruce took a deep breath, moving so that he could sit up in the nest and take Jason in his lap, like he was still a kid easy to maneuver and not a young man built like a fridge. He looked out of the window, then, past the untouched bed, lost in thought. “There are… things I’ll never accept.”

“Killing, you mean.”

“I love you, Jaylad. My morals have all and nothing to do with that, I hope you know it.”

Jason frowned, before hissing when Damian, somewhere outside the door, let a wave of sadness run down the bond and caused the Omega’s chest to hurt with the need for nursing.

“Chum…”

“No, keep going. What do your… feelings for me have to do with your morals?”

Bruce took a deep breath, clearly displeased by his refusal to acknowledge anyone outside of the nest or the den he had created, and Jason used the opportunity to grab his hand and place it on his belly; for some biological-bullshit reason, having his pack Alpha touching him, especially touching where his pup was, always sent a good amount of soothing hormones all over the Omega’s body.

Relaxing once more, even with milk running down his chest, Jason raised an eyebrow.

“I love you too much to see you lose yourself in death. Killing someone changes you and I know you did it already, but I think the only way for you to have the happiness you deserve is to keep your hands clean from now on,” Bruce explained with a soft voice. “I know I’d lose myself completely if I didn’t and you’re stronger than me, so stronger, but I’m your father. How can I want anything but the best for you?”

Ignoring Jason’s suddenly wet eyes, he kept going. “That’s what my morals have to do with the love I feel for you. Of course, they also have nothing to do with it… because I’ll always love you, Jaylad, no matter what you do.”

“I don’t understand why,” he whispered, whined, confessed. And that was the point, right? In the end, that was the core of it all: why would anyone love him? “I’ve done nothing good in my life.”

“You don’t need to do anything for me to love you, pup, just being you is enough. Besides, you did plenty. You-”

“-killed a lot of people,” Jason interrupted him, “and I don’t regret it.”

He sat up as well, facing Bruce because that was the adult thing to do, right? Talk eye to eye, without hiding, without allowing the bond to be the only way the Alpha could understand what was going on in his head. “The system doesn’t work, can’t you see that? Can’t you see how many people die every time a Rogue gets out of Arkham?” he asked, voice gaining strength the longer he went on. “And for what?! Because you don’t want blood on your hands? The system is fucked!”
“Then help me fix it,” Bruce replied, immediate and forceful and strong as fathers often looked in their children’s eyes. “Work with me, tell me everything that is wrong and let’s fix it, together. We can build a new asylum, better equipped, safer. We can push for real change with the right politicians, or through social campaigns that put enough pressure that even the corrupt ones won’t be able to wash their hands of it.”

He cupped his cheeks once more, in a gesture that was now painfully familiar. “We can help not just as Batman and Red Hood, but as Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd,” he continued. “You say the system doesn’t work? I agree, so let’s fix it. Together.”

Stunned, Jason blinked and the Alpha didn’t relent, using his silence to drive his point home. “You wanted to go to school, once. Why don’t you? Become a social worker and fix the system from the inside. Become a teacher and shape the next generation. Hell, go into politics and become the next mayor. There’s so much we can do, so much you can do.”

Jason felt tears run down his cheeks and his breath come out ragged, so he shrugged and took his face out of the man’s hands, unable to keep eye contact. “I don’t know why you have so much faith in me,” he muttered then.

“Because you’re my son, Jaylad. Because I know you,” Bruce replied as he dragged him into a hug. “And because I love you even when you can’t love yourself.”

The bond was like a lighthouse in the middle of the night, always shining brightly to show the lost ones their way home, or at least that’s how the Alpha of the Wayne pack hoped it was. It had never stopped the flowing of emotions from every member, too new, too influenced by the presence of an unsettled pregnant Omega to allow any of them to shield from it; a primitive biological response to make sure packs wouldn’t ignore their most vulnerable members.
It was always there, like a soft but intense fire thrumming under their skin and Bruce could tell it had nothing to do with power or dominance, and everything to do with protection and belonging. Family, most of all. It was a good tool, at that moment, to keep a constant eye on his pups without having to move from the nest and above all to gather a better understanding of Jason’s complicated feelings when the kid himself wasn’t able to express them.

Not that Bruce could blame him. He was probably worse.

But he was trying, he really was, and he could tell that the Omega was trying as well, even with the amount of hormones currently swimming in his body. They had talked more openly in the last week than they’d ever done even in the years before Jason’s death, probably… and wasn’t that a sad consideration? 

At least Bruce was learning from his mistakes.

He rose from the nest, covering his napping son with a blanket before sending a wave of affection and protection down the bond and leaving the room. Dick, Tim and Damian were all there, sitting on the hallway floor, shoulder to shoulder, with their backs to the wall; the air was heavy like before a thunderstorm and Dick had an expression the pack Alpha hadn’t seen on him in years, so lost and full of grief it actually took his breath away. Tim looked uncertain, his eyes darting between all of them. And Damian… Damian was staring at the closed door, a not-so-subtle hint of envy and powerlessness curling in his scent as he struggled to accept he wasn’t wanted by his dam, while their father was.

“Kids,” Bruce murmured, his voice tired.

“I know he needs time,” Dick said after taking a deep breath. “I just wish he would let us-”

His bond was full of guilt, probably because of the way they had met again, the way he had outed him without meaning to, or how he had helped hunt him down. The fact that he couldn’t do anything to actually fix his mistakes, or even just bring some relief to his suffering brother, was eating him from the inside, Bruce could feel it clearly. 

“At least you can stay with him,” Dick went on and lowered his wet eyes.

“It’s kind of… torture,” Tim murmured then, “to feel what he feels, to know what…” 

He shook his head, slowly. “He hates himself so much.”

Damian tightened his trembling lips.

“And he’s so… insecure,” Tim continued. “So hurt.”

It wasn’t like the pack Alpha didn’t know it; he, however, could see Jason and hold him and reassure him, making sure that pain wasn’t the only thing left between them and that the new bond, born from the ashes of the first one, was strong and as full of love as he could manage.

If he had been the one forced to stand outside the den, he knew it, he would have lost his mind with worry.

Tim shrugged and hugged his knees to his chest, making himself look smaller. “I know I’m no one to him,” he murmured, voice suspiciously tight and bond flaring with embarrassment and longing, “but I…”

Bruce sighed and caressed the kid’s hair, scenting him. With the amount of neglect he had experienced from his birth parents, it wasn’t surprising that being nursed and treated like a pup had left him wishing for more of that care, that warmth, that love.

“I am someone to him,” Damian gritted when it became clear that Tim wasn’t going to say anything else, “which is why I do not understand why he is rejec- why he does not allow me to be by his side!”

Dick sniffed, the shame in his scent as stinging as a slap. “He doesn’t trust us, does he?”

A new pang of guilt lit up the bond and Bruce tensed, before he turned toward the closed door. When he opened it, slowly and with his eyebrows high in surprise, Jason was kneeling on the ground just behind it. They looked at each other for a few seconds, blinking silently, before the Omega let out a loud whine and his guilt once again hit them all through the bond.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered and Bruce stepped by his side, gripping one of his shoulders to ground him.

“You’re okay, chum.”

Jason shook his head, eyes low. “You don’t want to see me like this, guys,” he whispered. “I’m not…”

“You’re my little brother,” Dick declared, sure and strong and protective as he had always been.

Damian shuffled closer, though still respecting the clear boundary of the room, and scoffed. “You’re my dam.”

Tim rested his chin on his knees. “You’re my Robin.”

And Jason sobbed, overwhelmed to the point that even Bruce, as pack Alpha, couldn’t really discern all the emotions he was pumping through the bond. He hugged him nonetheless, both kneeling just a few feet inside the den, under the careful eyes of three other members of the pack – and then someone moved from a corner of the hallway and Bruce realized Alfred had been there all along, silently checking on the pups as always.

Jason bent a little to hide his face in the bag he had in his arms and only then the Alpha realized he was holding the clothes they had all given him for his nest, the same ones he had refused to touch until then.

If Bruce was a betting man, he’d say the Omega had woken up as soon as he had found himself sleeping alone and had eavesdropped the conversation outside his door – those words so full of emotions, which the bond had shown him without filter, that his instinct had finally won. Grabbing the clothes, which might have seemed like a minor thing, was actually huge.

“I’m the ghost of the person you knew,” Jason said.

Bruce shook his head. “We all change.”

The Omega sighed, eyes low. “Too quickly. Last week I would have shot myself rather than stay here.”

They didn’t reply, not bothering to mention how quickly the bond had betrayed the lie, and simply looked at him as Jason took the bag and brought it to the nest, leaving the door wide open for the first time. Bruce stayed where he was as Dick, Tim and Damian all moved closer to the invisible line separating the room from the hallway, this time with the complete view of what their brother and dam was doing, and none of them allowed themselves to even breathe as the Omega added each piece of clothing to the blankets and pillows already on the floor.

Bruce stood up, studying his son to understand if he wanted him to join him, as he had for the last few days, or if he was alright with being on his own – not that he didn’t want to cuddle Jason until the image of his small, dead body was erased from his memory, of course. He just thought he’d get the ultrasound machine ready, in case he managed to convince him to get a quick check-up, just to be safe.

“Chum,” he called him with a low chuff, taking a step forward. “Do you think you could come with me to the Cave?”

Jason tensed from where he was tidying up the nest, before he shook his head, keeping his eyes on one of Dick’s sweaters. He sniffed it softly and Bruce noticed his eldest hide a wet smile when the piece of fabric ended up tucked near a pillow.

“Why?” Jason asked, voice low.

He hissed and touched his full breast, letting out a strong scent of milk in the air. Tim swayed at its intensity, Dick blinked in surprise. Damian, the one who had been nursed by the Omega the most, basically since they first met in the League, whined. 

“Dam,” he whispered, his side of the bond buzzing with the pull to cover himself in Jason’s scent and let the gesture reassure him that he still had his parent.

They looked at each other, then, silent under the others’ watchful eyes, and Bruce didn’t move a muscle in fear of interrupting the clear flow of feelings running between his two kids: sorrow, shame, fear. Love. 

Acceptance.

Jason chuffed once, voice low – and Damian ran inside the room and jumped on him, sending him flat on his back inside the nest as he wriggled to find a comfortable position in his lap. His hands crawled under the Omega’s shirt and started raising it.

“You shouldn’t…” Jason murmured, voice strangled and bond heavy with self-doubt.

Damian chirped. “You are perfect, dam.”

And then the pup’s lips closed on Jason’s nipple and Bruce exhaled, the tension in his chest loosening just a bit.

It wasn’t healing, it wasn’t peace, it wasn’t a magical solution.

But it was a step forward – and in that moment, it was enough.

Chapter Text

Bruce had often dreamed of something similar. All his sons in one room, maybe even in one nest, Dick pressed against him like he hadn’t properly done since he was a kid, small Jason tucked in between them, protected from the world; Tim and Damian on his other side, warm and young in a way they so rarely let themselves be.

The situation wasn’t the same, of course, not after what they had all been through, but Jason was nursing Damian in the nest and his other two sons were buzzing with energy on the doorstep, and while it wasn’t like his dream it was enough. They were all safe, all together, and Bruce’s heart was about to burst out of his chest.

And yet…

He looked at his second son, at the way he was tensed and not completely at ease even if he was breastfeeding who he considered to be his pup. They all knew the two had met in the League and Damian had explained, with clipped words and embarrassed glances, how nursing had become their non-secret – well known by Talia and Ra’s both due to their mixed, milky scents and because it had been the two Alphas’ idea, but accepted and kept quiet by everyone else. Something that was usually vulnerable had become a strength, in that way, a functional choice or even duty toward the Al Ghul’s heir, and only for the Omega and pup it had truly felt more intimate, more affectionate.

Bruce didn’t have to be a detective, to see how different it was now. Now, in their home which Jason had thought he’d never get again, under the eyes of his pack Alpha, his Alpha brother and a young Beta who had also been nursed, during a time controlled by instinct instead of the mind. He could feel Jason oozing embarrassment through the bond as he kept his attention on the wall instead of them, how vulnerable and tired he actually was. The physical relief, too, because his breasts had been so full, and at the same time a growing shame for having missed it so much.

There was also a certain… hunger, underneath it all, and it took Bruce a few moments to fully understand it. Jason had been a starved touched kid, when they met, but emotionally starved as well. He focused on love and support and pushed it out to metaphorically hug his son, who snapped his eyes to meet his, before blushing and turning to look at Damian, suckling calmly on his nipple.

And then, because they were all so attuned to one another, they all turned to stare at Tim. He was flushed red, hugging his chest, and the bond trembled with his frustration and longing and jealousy; by his side, Dick was trying to squash a hint of jealousy as well.

And, in front of it all, Jason’s guilt.

“Jaylad,” Bruce called him, because it was his role as pack Alpha and father and even Batman to make sure the message was loud and clear. “We’re going to follow your lead on this, okay? You don’t owe anyone anything.”
Desire to be close, to be respectful, to open up, to be on his own; the bond was being pulled in all directions, all at once.

“You get to choose, alright?” Bruce insisted. “You can always say no. In and outside your nest. With no guilt.”

Maybe a little on the nose, but still. He had a feeling Jason needed to hear it.

The Omega hugged Damian a little tighter, indecision flaring bright in the bond, and it was so clear how much he was conflicted on… kind of a lot, to be honest. Being the pack Alpha, Bruce could probably perceive it better than the others; the way Jason wanted to almost strip his own skin at every pull of milk from his pup, but also how good it felt to have something so pure to give. The desperate loneliness that slipped away a little more at every inhale of protective pack scent. How much he had missed being home. How angry he still was.

The human hurt underneath it all.

The room was filled with the soft sound of suckling, while another wave of warmth swam through the bond, and Bruce closed his eyes for a second.

It hurt to hope all would be well – but he hoped anyway.

Jason was so fragile, in that moment, no matter how strong they all knew he could be, and the Alpha promised himself to help him in any way he could, even if what he needed was distance from his siblings and said siblings missed him. He didn’t want Tim and Dick to suffer, of course, he was just trying to do right by his kid – and force him to nurse Tim, or to allow Dick into the nest? Force him to do anything?

He opened his eyes, hit by a deep sadness. 

He was Batman, he knew the signs. 

For an Omega to kill his pup’s sire?

Maybe he was wrong, God, he hoped he was wrong. He hoped it was a wrong assumption because of years spent fighting Gotham’s darkness, and not the actual truth. Either way, Bruce himself had taken away his choice by biting him with no consent, even to save his life, so it was important to remark, over and over again if necessary, that Jason could say no.

Tim moved slightly where he was still standing in the doorway, muscles tense. “Of course,” he whispered, before clearing his voice. “You don’t owe us anything, you don’t have to… I will try to control it better, I promise.”

His scent was sour with shame, almost entirely covering the deep longing that was still heavy in him.

Jason turned his head toward him, gaze fixed on an empty spot on the wall behind Tim and jaw clenched like he was fighting himself. Then, slowly, he met his eyes.

“Do you really want to?” the Omega asked, voice rough. “You sure?”

Tim nodded, eager, before biting his lips. “Only if you’re okay with it.”

Sitting down on the floor, almost in between the two, Bruce held his breath… until Jason, body language and bond both finally losing most of the hesitation, moved his head to point at the nest and opened the arm he wasn’t holding Damian with.

He then closed his eyes and leaned back. “Be gentle.”

Tim looked at Bruce once, briefly, just to be sure, and he nodded, letting affection and reassurance seep out his scent as the Beta slowly entered the room and walked to the nest. He stopped there, kneeling at its border, and the bond clearly showed the trepidation he was feeling and the fear of messing it up.

Jason opened his eyes again. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You can.”

When Tim finally lowered himself into the nest, tucking his young body against the Omega’s bigger bulk, and opened his lips on Jason’s nipple, Bruce caught the small trembling of his shoulders and felt the wave of gratitude, relief and belonging through the bond.

Jason’s body unclenched, tension bleeding out, and the pack Alpha inhaled as the room filled with all those unspoken emotions. It might have not been a full acceptance of his importance in their family, yet, but it was a step, a gesture. It was enough.

We’re healing each other, one drop at a time, he thought. When he turned to look at Dick, he found the second Alpha with tears in his eyes.

“I didn’t think you’d want me,” Jason murmured then and although it was impossible to understand if he was talking to Tim or to the pack in general, with the way he was stubbornly staring at the ceiling, it didn’t really matter. “I thought I was too ruined to be yours.”

“You’re not ruined,” Dick replied immediately. “And you’ll always be ours as much as we’ll always be yours… if that’s what you want.”

Jason swallowed. “I wanted the bond. I’ve missed it since it broke,” he confessed. “I just wanted you to want me.”

“We do,” Bruce was quick to confirm.

“I don’t think I’m mad anymore,” the nursing Omega continued. “I’m just… tired.”

Bruce crawled closer to pass a hand through his hair and spread his protective scent all over him. “Then rest, pup. We’ll take care of you. You’re safe.”

And Jason closed his eyes.

Maybe, just for a little while, it would be okay.

He didn’t fall asleep, not really, content with resting in silence with his family by his side. Something inside him had been rearranged, somehow, and he couldn’t quite remember where everything had been before, but it didn’t bother him too much. Even if he was tired in a way that sleeping wouldn’t fix.

The bond was there — faint, buzzing low under his skin — but distant, a little muted, like everyone had tried to step back to give him space. 

Damian and Tim had stopped nursing and they were simply cuddling on his chest, mouths open with drops of milk still on their tongues and lips, their scents so content it was almost dizzying. Bruce was still petting his hair and Dick was sitting in the doorway, elbows on his raised knees. He was trying, although not very successfully, to shield his feelings and Jason, for one moment, had the irrational fear that he was giving up on him – but he was still there and so were the others, and the Omega was still whole, still alive.

And so was his pup.

Almost sensing his train of thought, even though bonds didn’t work like that so it was probably a mix of reading his body language and knowing his son well enough to guess, Bruce stopped petting him and took a deep breath.

“Do you think you’re up for going to the Cave, chum?” he murmured. 

His voice had been low, meant to avoid disrupting the peace, and yet the whole pack tensed anyway because Jason did. He didn’t do it on purpose, he just couldn’t help it; his nest was safe, the whole room was basically a den and the Cave was… a whole bunch of memories and traumatic moments – and magic, too, underneath it all.

“Why?” he asked, turning his head to study his father’s expression. 

Dick sat up better against the door, while Tim and Damian both rose to their knees.

Bruce’s face went incredibly soft. “The ultrasound machine is there.”

And the fact was, Jason had never heard the pup’s heartbeat. He had imagined it so much, even dreamed of it, and he knew for a fact the others had heard it the first night, when things had gone so wrong, so fast; he, however, had been asleep the whole time. Waking up – for real, not victim of his own instincts – had been kind of distressing, so he hadn’t thought about asking, he hadn’t thought…

He swallowed a whine and received nuzzles from both of the kids in his arms.

“I will destroy the machine for you if it scares the pup,” Damian reassured him. He was a little milk drunk, maybe, but he had the spirit and Jason chuckled.

“Alright,” he agreed, “as long as you’re there to protect me.”

Tim pouted, making the Omega sit up and scruff him gently with a coo. “You too, puppy.”

They all stood up, both Alphas looking at him with pride and worry equally present in the bond, and Jason knew how monumental it might seem. He hadn’t left the protection of the room for what felt like a century; the nest, the softness, the scents, the closed quarters… the hallway would be more open, colder in any sense, and the Cave had its own sets of memories. 

In the end, however, it was still the Manor. It was still the place Jason had lived in for years. 

It was still – maybe, one day, already – home.

Right? 

A hand squeezed him on the shoulder and he raised his eyes to meet Dick’s. “It’s okay, Little Wing,” his brother said. “We’re here.”

The idea of walking out in the hallway might have felt like going back in time, in a certain way… and the complete opposite at the same time. In the end, Jason guessed memories mattered only to a certain degree, when his pack was by his side, ready to step into the future with him.

It took them only a few minutes, before Jason was on a medbay cot, lying in a semi-reclined position with his legs stretched out and his back propped up. He hadn’t bothered with putting the shirt on, considering what they were about to do, and now he had goosebumps all over. Or maybe it was anxiety.

He followed with his eyes Alfred, who was somehow all-knowing and therefore had been waiting for them there, and he leaned his head against Bruce, who was standing by his side, opposite the butler, and petting his head. His heart was thumping fast in his ears, no matter the way Damian and Tim both were keeping guard by his feet and Dick was covering the door from intruders they all knew weren’t there; it was like his body was asking for protection and Jason allowed the bond to calm him down a little.

This was his choice. 

In the midst of all the ones life had taken away from him, this was his.

He was going to be a parent. No matter how it had happened. The pup was his.

And now, for the first time since finding out about it, since looking at the multiple positive pregnancy tests in the small bathroom of his safe house, since deciding to become a dam for someone other than Damian, for the first time he was going to hear the heartbeat.

At least he was sure it wasn’t a litter. The family had heard only one.

And now he was going to hear it too – because it would have still been there, right? He hadn’t done anything to risk his pup after going out as Red Hood that last time, after all.

Right?

He jumped when the gel touched his skin; it was cold and so was the medbay, really, too metallic and colorless for a place that was about to witness something so warm and full of life.

“Are you quite ready, Master Jason?” Alfred asked, ultrasound wand in his hand.

Am I?, he wondered. Probably not.

He took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

And then, like a miracle, the rhythmic sound of Jason’s future.

His mouth opened before he could control it, a whispered “it’s real” on his lips, and the bond flared more brightly than it had ever done since its rebirth, the emotion coming from him but immediately ricocheting between all the other members. When he raised his eyes to meet Bruce’s, he found them full of tears.

“Don’t look at me like I’m fragile,” Jason pleaded, even knowing the Alpha was simply overjoyed by everything – the pup, the fact that he had his son again, the whole pack being there…

“I’m not,” Bruce reassured him. He kissed him on the temple. “I’m looking at you like I’m seeing your heart beat outside your chest.”

His soft rumble filled the room and Jason replied with a chuff. 

Bruce kissed him again, this time on his head. “It’s your pup,” he whispered against his hair, “but you are mine.”

The Omega sniffed, somewhat overwhelmed, and leaned on his pack Alpha a little more.

The rest of the pack was emotional as well; Dick was blinking out tears, Tim had his eyes glued to the ultrasound image, Alfred had a fond expression on his face, and in all of that, Damian. Damian, moving his gaze from the screen showing the pup to his dam’s belly, to his pack Alpha. 

“Dames,” Jason called him, beckoning him closer.

“Are you alright?” the future Alpha asked, his voice low and controlled even though his side of the bond was a hurricane of feelings. He looked at the image once more, quickly.

“I am, puppy,” Jason murmured. He stared at the monitor as well. “He or she… they seem strong.”

Damian didn’t hesitate. “Of course they are.”

The way he was so certain of it, like no pup in the Wayne family could ever be anything but, made the Omega chuckle again. 

Then, as happy as he had been until a second before then, dread filled Jason to the brick. Bruce was immediately there to try to soothe him, but he focused on Damian.

“I need you to be honest with me, pup,” he almost ordered and waited for him to nod before continuing. “As honest as I know for a fact you can be.”

“You have my word, dam.”

Jason smiled through the uneasiness and cupped the kid’s cheek. “I know I wasn’t the only parent in your life,” he started, not turning to look at Bruce but feeling him tense by his side. “But was I… was I-”

“You were good, dam,” Damian interrupted him. He moved past Alfred to press himself under the Omega’s neck, scenting him and getting scented by him at the same time. When he was done, he stood up again and lowered his eyes, hesitating. “Sometimes you were the only good thing there,” he whispered.
A pang of pain traveled through the bond from all the sides and Damian flushed, eyes darting to the exit before Jason grabbed his hand and held on tight so that he wouldn’t bolt.

“I’m a little scared,” he confessed, more to make the pup relax with the mutual vulnerability than anything else. “Will you tell me if I make mistakes?”

It took Damian a few seconds, before he nodded slowly, solemnly. Like he was accepting a mission. “I will.”

Jason nodded as well, a small smile on his lips, before he looked at Alfred and asked him if he could let him hear the heartbeat again, a request the butler was quick to oblige. Soon the rhythmic sound went back to echo in the silent medbay and the Omega smiled, letting himself rest on the gurney under him with his full weight, instead of the tensed position he had locked his muscles in without even noticing. Bruce gave him a glass of water and he gulped it down, keeping it empty in his hands to have something to play with.

He had a pup. 

Well, he already had one – maybe two, if the way Tim now smelt like his milk meant anything –, but now he was going to have one more. One he’d push out of his own body, one who’d share half of his genes, one who’d maybe have his hair, or his eyes, and hopefully none of his anger.

“It’s real,” he repeated.

Then, because things never went well for too long, in his life, Dick cleared his voice and turned the peace into unforgiving hurt. “Little Wing?” he called him, hesitation clear in every letter. “What about the sire?”

It might have been just his imagination, but it seemed everyone held their breath as he froze, panic and pain running freely from his side of the bond to each member of the pack. It took him almost half a minute, in the end, to actually reply. “Dead.”

He knew he had probably already shown his hand. One word, cold, definitive, with no tears or shivers or longing typical of an Omega after losing his mate. No bite on his neck either, now that he thought about it, except Bruce’s pack-claiming one.

Only the ones who had met either betrayal or violence would have reacted that well. 

“Oh,” Dick muttered, still leaning against the door. Tim moved to stand by his oldest brother and Jason dipped in every training he had received to control the outpour of emotions flowing out of him, even though it would have been impossible to stop them all.

“This pup will have my name,” he went on and immediately regretted opening his mouth, because the more he spoke about it the worse his stomach churned with disgust and shame. “Well, kind of have to, who knows who the asshole who sired him was. And it’s not like he’d deserve it.”

God, why, why couldn’t he just shut the fuck up?

Dick, horror in the bond suggesting he knew the reason, took a step toward him. When he talked again, his voice was strangled – like he wasn’t asking for confirmation as much as begging for a different explanation. “You don’t know his name.”

And Jason could have replied in many ways and in another life he could have even kept his cool, perhaps even cracking a joke and hiding behind humor to cover the nightmare; he could have lied, inventing a story about a one-night stand, or an undercover mission, whatever.

But anger exploded in his stomach and his chest, in his quickly dropped fangs, in his clenched fists. You don’t know his name, Dick had said. It didn’t even matter that he knew he hadn’t meant it like that, it still sounded like an accusation in his mind, like Jason was such a slut to have let an Alpha knot him without even knowing his fucking name.

The snarl he let out, at that point, was pure instinct. “Well the next time I get jumped on the streets I’ll make sure to get an ID, Dickhead, how does that sound?”

Jason raised the empty glass still in his hand and threw it against a wall – after that, silence.

Chapter Text

Shame didn’t scream. 

It curled under the skin like a disease, like smoke, like a truth that hung in the air, too heavy for words, too raw for names. Familiar, yet unwanted. Burning to the point of never return.

Jason didn’t bleed, but in him there was still a wound that would never really close. 

After every growl he had let out that night, every whine, every sob, he had picked himself up from the cold street, kicked the half-naked corpse away from him, and gone home by himself, and since then he had carried both the weight of what had happened and the silence that had followed.

Except that now the secret had spilled out of him, finding the light even though it belonged in the shadows, too tender, too ruined to survive being seen. Now, Jason found himself cracked open.

And somehow still breathing.

He raised his eyes with a shaken breath; the bond was vibrating like someone was screaming incessantly, to the point that he felt like hiding, but at the same time he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to know what the others were thinking, given the bond was too chaotic to give him a real answer. 

Damian had his eyes glued to the floor, bottom lip trembling and hand squeezing Jason’s like a vine. Tim seemed on the verge of puking. Alfred had turned around to hide his expression, although his shoulders were tense.

Dick… Dick was a broken man. “I’m… fuck, I’m sorry, Little Wing, I didn’t mean to…”

Oh. He was cursing. If it had been a different moment, Jason would have cracked a joke.

He turned to stare at Bruce, instead, at the way his hands were closed in fists on his sides. He didn’t look too surprised, maybe, but half heartbroken father and half I’m-going-to-break-your-spine Batman. The kind that would come out when one of his Robins got hurt and very few times otherwise.

“Little Wing,” Dick called him, his voice bent by guilt and pity and horror. 

“It’s fine, Dickwing,” Jason said, even though it wasn’t fine at all. He let out a long breath. “I know you didn’t mean it. It just… triggered me a little, I guess.”

Progress, so much progress.

Right?

The silence that followed was so heavy it almost felt alive – like even the walls were breathing in the blood, the fear, the loss that had hit them.

It was… too much. He moved restlessly on the bed, wondering if he could just sprint out of the medbay and- and go where? Back to the nest just a few floors upstairs? To Crime Alley? Out of Gotham altogether?

The simple idea made nausea swim in his stomach and the bond must have absorbed the sensation, because Bruce immediately put an arm around his shoulders and kissed his temple, allowing his protective pack Alpha scent to comfort him; it was something simple, a grounding gesture, but Jason knew his father, he knew the man would have taken all his pain on himself if he could have, or shielded him from the darkness of the world, swaddled him in a blanket with his scent and kept him safe in the Manor forever. 

And Jason didn’t even realize the hand Damian wasn’t holding was shaking, until Bruce took it in his own and kissed his knuckles. 

Damian, still silent, tried to hide a sniff.

“Puppy,” he tried to get him to look at him, “com’on, puppy, show me those eyes.”

“You lied to me,” the kid grunted, a hint of Alpha in his voice. “You claimed those men with the heat inducers did not harm you.”

“They didn’t,” Jason whispered, “I just couldn’t get to the safe house in time. I was walking down an alley and…”

He cleared his voice. “I tried fighting him off. I need you guys to know it, I… I tried.”

“Of course you did, Master Jason,” came quickly Alfred’s reassurance. He seemed to have aged ten years in a few minutes, but as soon as the bond betrayed the Omega’s guilt he shook his head. “No, dear boy. I am quite glad you told us.”

Hesitating, Jason leaned a little bit more in Bruce’s embrace. “You are?”

“We are, Jaylad,” the Alpha replied. “You don’t have to face it alone.”

And then, because he couldn’t stay silent and only his father knew it, while the rest of the family had no idea and therefore couldn’t fairly look at him that way, like someone they felt sorry for, he sat up a straighter and let out the beginning of a snarl. “I killed him.” 

Something dark glinted in Tim’s eyes. “Good.”

Dick nodded, his cheeks wet, while Damian, still shaking a little, bent to hide his face against his dam’s scent gland, breathing in like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

Suddenly exhausted, Jason whined softly. “Can we go back to the nest, now?”

So upstairs they went, after Alfred printed a picture of the ultrasound and the Omega put it in his sweats’ pocket with trembling fingers. He was overwhelmed by how much everything had changed in less than a week, by the way he kept opening up even when it felt like he wouldn’t be able to stitch himself up again; by the deep desire in his guts to just belong and let his family love him after thinking for so long that they didn’t – which might have sounded like a quick change of heart from his part, but how could he deny the sincerity of their affection and guilt and fear of losing him, if he could literally feel it at all times? The bond pulsed with those emotions every second of the day. His siblings had kept watch out of his den, sitting on the floor in turns. His father had not left him once, when Jason had needed him, nor he had forced him to let the others in. He had talked about choice and acceptance and love.

And after everything, after the betrayal, the lack of revenge, the replacement, after spending so long hurt alone… Jason just wanted his family back.

Was it that bad? To wish to move forward? 

To let the anger go? To let the pain hiding underneath see the light? To let the people who loved him the most on the planet help him fix it, or face it, or even just stay there with him in the dark, until he was ready?

If his whole life had been destroyed in that warehouse, torn apart by a maniacal laugh and a heavy crowbar and sudden fire, were ruins the only thing left? Or was it possible to build something from it?

Red Hood, he thought as he finally walked inside his room again, before crawling inside his nest. Maybe it was too trauma-infused to be his moniker.

Maybe I should have picked Phoenix.

He sat down and fixed a few pillows and blankets that had been moved while standing up, and only after a few seconds of pure silence he realized no one had followed him into the nest; Bruce was in the room, just a couple of steps away, but his siblings had respectfully kept out, with Alfred just behind them.

Jason cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed. “You can come in. All of you.”

He took his pup’s picture out of his pocket and lent it to Bruce to put on the nightstand near the bed; the man stared at it for many seconds, bond flaring with a deep joy and protectiveness, before he complied, walked into the nest and sat with his back to the wall, legs stretched out. Jason quickly decided that lying down with his head on his father’s thighs sounded too comfortable to pass up, especially after fluffing a pillow in between the Alpha’s leg and the floor, creating a sort of slide that would have spared the Omega’s neck from any pain. 

He caught Alfred sitting down on the bed nearby, not really in the nest but close enough to feel part of it; Damian was the next to walk in, sliding between Jason and the wall, to rest his head on his dam’s chest while also being the closest to Bruce. 

Tim hesitated a few moments, waiting for the Omega’s official, personal permission – which he granted with a nod – to shuffle into Damian’s same position, although on the opposite side. Only when Jason, already buzzing with the feeling of safety-home-love from the pack, raised his eyes, he finally noticed Dick, sitting on the floor outside the nest.
“Com’on, Dickie,” he murmured, knowing the name would have done wonders by itself. Then, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he decided to give him a last blow, a coup the grâce. “It’s not the same without my big brother.”

And Grayson, making good of his old family name, all but flew into the nest.

Same old Dickhead, Jason thought, fondness running down the bond.

Bruce chuckled and even Alfred’s lips went up a little, as Dick sat down in the same position as his father and put three sets of legs – the Omega’s and the pups’ – to rest on his own.

They stayed like that for minutes, just basking in the feeling of safety and unity, all there and all alive and unharmed, before Damian shifted a little and put his hand on Jason’s belly… making him inhale silently in surprise. He still looked the same, he knew it, or at least from an outsider’s point of view, and it would take a while for his skin to start stretching and for his body to get rounder and softer; it just didn’t mean he was used to the idea.

It had happened so fast.

Maybe, if he had been more attuned to his body, more comfortable in his Omega skin, he would have noticed immediately after conception, like in certain movies. Maybe he would have known that the Pit burned morning after pills almost as quickly as he did with suppressants.

The only thing it hadn’t burned had been the heat inducer – except it hadn’t been just heat, right? More like poison in his veins, fire under his skin and the leather he was wearing. The burn had been thick, greedy, like a hand sliding into his gut and twisting, ready to turn his body in a meal for someone else’s hunger.

Not a real heat, no. That one had been artificial. Forced. A betrayal of the natural world.

Even now that Jason was safe with his pack, in a warm nest, with a bond humming in comfort, his muscles remembered how he had fought, how he had clawed at the Alpha and at the pavement underneath him and at the wall behind him. The way he had tried to focus on the pain in his fingers, to try to keep himself lucid through the fog of the heat.

And then, the ultimate betrayal. Because in between the fear, the pain, the anger… he had started to slick. To shiver. To ask for it.

The molten shame of wanting to be touched, even when he didn’t want to be touched at all, was probably going to haunt him for the rest of his life. He guessed he should have been thankful he couldn’t remember much of what had happened after the heat had overcome him, because otherwise he would have been forced to admit it wasn’t just the Alpha, who broke him – it was the part of him that responded. That gave in. That survived.

Had he moaned? Had he begged for a knot? 

Jason didn’t need to know. Didn’t want to, really.

Big, scary Red Hood. A former Robin, the kind Robin. Trained to fight, trained to face pain and stand up nonetheless. What good did that do, uh?

At least he hadn’t cried, before going down. Not even when he had killed the monster with the perfect shot in the head, or when the knot had left him aching and sore, filthy with his spent. Not when he had to fix his torn clothes, or limp to a safe house that simply couldn’t have felt less safe. 

The weirdest part was maybe feeling like he had lost, when he had been the one to kill, his the gun to fire, him the one who survived. He almost wanted to scream to the world that he had been the one to win, that surviving and surrendering were two very different things, but silence was safer – silence didn’t argue.

“Jaylad,” Bruce called him and Jason blinked in the low-lit room, coming back to the present with his heart running wild.

“Uh?” he managed to get out.

“You’re safe,” Tim murmured from where he was still pressed by his side.

The Omega nodded, before realizing the bond had probably let them feel the rollercoaster of emotions he had faced inside his mind. “I’m fine,” he whispered, not really sure if it was the truth or not.

And then, for some reason, he found himself wanting to explain himself. To open up. To let them in.

“It’s just that sometimes it feels like life keeps pushing me down,” he admitted with a low voice. “And every time I try to stand up, it kicks me to keep me there. It… it pushes me down again and again and fucking screams that I…” he sniffed, hugged the pups a little tighter. “Maybe I was born to die kneeling.”

He saw Bruce shake his head, his chest trembling in a poorly concealed growl. “Can you look at me?”

Jason sniffed again, before he turned his head to comply. When he met his father’s eyes, there was nothing but love and determination in them.
“If there is one thing I’ve never doubted about you, Jason Todd-Wayne, Omega to the Wayne pack, my second son, my miracle, is that you were never good at staying down.”

He cupped his cheeks, before he bent down to kiss his forehead. “And if you need help to stand up again take our hands and let us help, because we’re not going anywhere. And you’re worth it.”

A sob was torn out of Jason with the violence of a dagger in his back, one that kept the wound from bleeding too much but that still needed to be taken out for the body to heal. He started crying, then, silently, with the kind of tears that burn the skin they touch, and he was immediately submerged with so much love and comfort in the bond, that his breasts started to drip.

He didn’t need to say anything, at that point; just cup Damian’s and Tim’s cheeks and let the bond speak for itself. 

When they latched, it felt like belonging. It felt like family.

“It’s going to take me a while to believe it, I think,” Jason whispered after a few minutes.

Dick nodded slowly. “We’ll repeat it as many times as you need.”

The Omega turned his head to look at him. His big brother was still sitting with his back on the wall and three sets of legs on his own, content with being included, always so eager to be there for his family, to protect them, to help in any way. Jason knew he had kept him a little at arm’s length, compared to Damian and Tim, and while he was sure no one would ever blame him, he also wanted to erase the involuntary gap he had created.

Dick had been his only brother for years, after all. His older brother, both at the time and now. Even after everything, he was still his Big Wing.

Damian shifted, lips opening and closing on Jason’s nipple with a soft smacking sound, and a drop of milk rolled down over the bumpy skin of a scar. The Omega sighed, before wiping it with a fingertip without thinking.

Then, looking at the white pearl on his thumb, he hesitated – and Dick, wonderful, intuitive Dick, moved forward. “Are you sure?” he asked, voice soft, uncertain.

Before, Jason would have been worried about being mocked, or rejected, but after everything that had happened, with how much he had cut himself open to let his family in, he knew he could trust that wide-eyed Alpha to understand the importance of the gesture. How much Jason was lowering his walls.

The Omega nodded, inhaled one last time, then held out the milk-slick finger – and when his brother took it in between his lips and his tongue darted to taste the liquid, eyes closing by instinct, the bond flared so brightly that something in Jason loosened.

He almost wanted to purr.

Almost.

Dick retreated with a happy sigh. “Tastes like home.”

Because it wasn’t simple comfort. It was, more than anything, trust.

“Thank you, Jason,” Bruce murmured even though he didn’t have anything to do with it, and the Omega looked at him for a second before he realized how proud the man was feeling, how happy he was that all of his kids were getting along.

The pack Alpha petted his hair, scenting him in the process. The monster had smelled him like he was a piece of meat, but his father scented him like he was family. Two men with the same designation, but so different that it was impossible for Jason not to relax even more, because this touch wasn’t forceful, it wasn’t imposed, it was gentle and parental and comforting.

A single tear ran down his temple, reaching his ear in its not entirely straight path.

Fuck, he had been so warm and not happy, okay, but comforted, and now he was back to square one, thinking about that night he would have loved to forget and never recall again.

What was wrong with him, that he couldn’t even stop his own mind from running in the wrong direction?
“It is quite alright, Master Jason,” Alfred assured him as soon as his breath quickened. “The path is not linear. There will be good and bad moments, good and bad days. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I can’t even remember his face,” the Omega whispered then, because at this point what was one more confession? “I tried to fight him off, but I was drugged and I… I just couldn’t. Ironic, uh? Big, bad Red Hood, too fucking weak to fight back.”

“You’re not weak because you got hurt, Little Wing,” Dick corrected him quickly. He squeezed his knee, grounding him.

“I didn’t want this,” Jason couldn’t stop himself from saying. “I didn’t want to be like this. I was trying to forget and then…”

He felt Damian’s thumb stroke his belly as he slowed his nursing and he took a deep breath. “Then I found out about the pup and…”

“What, Jaylad?” 

“And I hated myself because I didn’t hate the pup. I still don’t.”

This time, Bruce’s voice arrived firm and more Alpha-like than it had since the night of the kick. “This pup is not what was done to you. This pup is yours, if you want it, and nothing will ever take them away from you.”

Then, letting out quite an astounding amount of protective scent in the bedroom, he passed another hand in Jason’s hair. “No matter your choice, we’ll be right here. But it’s your choice, chum. Only you have a say in it. Not your past, not your pack, only you.”

Jason, a little dumbfounded, frowned. “Choice,” he repeated.

“Yes, Jaylad,” Bruce confirmed. “Whatever you choose, we’ll be here. We don’t love you and want you with us because of the pup, we love the pup because of you. So if you want to be their dam, we’ll be by your side. If you don’t, we’ll be by your side anyway.”

And that… that was exactly what Jason had needed to hear, without even realizing how important it was. In the end, of course, it wouldn’t have changed his actions; he was a strenuous defender of the right to choose for your own body, whether it meant keeping a pregnancy or terminating it, and he had walked many Omegas to various clinics since his time as Robin, protecting them when needed. He had lost enough control over his body and actions, first with the Pit madness and then with the r-with that, and even with the pack bond, so no one could have made him do anything about this pup without his consent.

It was just such a relief, to hear those words, that another tear slipped out.

He was the one who mattered to his family. Not his potential as a dam, not the promise of a future generation, not his biology. Simply Jason Todd.

Jason Todd-Wayne.

“And you'd accept the pup into the pack? Even if his sire… even if the only reason they exist is the very kind of Alpha you usually hunt down?” he asked just to be sure.

Bruce let out a low rumble deep into his chest. “No pup of yours will ever be unwanted. Not in this pack.”

The bond pulsated slowly, like a broken heart learning to beat again, and Jason, almost shocking himself, felt the last resistance in his chest give out as he started trembling in a way he hadn’t done since dying.

“I want to keep it,” he declared.

Then his lips bent in a small smile.

He was purring.

“I can’t. I can’t, dad, I can’t,” Jason sobbed, forehead glistening in sweat as he squeezed his pack Alpha’s hand with all his strength.
Bruce didn’t even blink at the strain on his fingers, just let out a comforting rumble. “You can, Jaylad, you’re almost done. Just one more push and you’ll get your pup. Just one more.”

The Omega looked at him, lips shaking with the effort and the fear and the pain. 

“You can do this, son,” Bruce doubled down and suddenly Jason realized he wasn’t just talking about the birth.

“Dad,” he whined.

“You can, chum. And you won’t have to do it alone.”

Jason closed his eyes, letting tears roll down his cheeks and mix with the sweat; then he nodded, took a last, shaky breath, and pushed.

His pup was born like that, covered in blood and his dam’s scent, healthy like the strong pack he already had bonds with suggested. He had black hair, like all of his family, and Jason’s chin and lips.

His eyes were dark, but so were Damian’s and that was enough.

He didn’t cry, not even as Leslie cleaned him or Bruce cut the umbilical cord, and as soon as he was put in his dam’s arms he started purring.

Jason, exhausted but happier than he could ever remember, purred back.

In the end, Jason picked the name Ash – because from the ashes of a future he had thought he didn't deserve, he had risen instead. Because that pup, born from the ruins of a fallen hero, could still learn how to fly. Because, sometimes, what burned didn’t die. Sometimes it simply lit the way.

So he called him Ash — but the pack mainly called him Little Phoenix.