Chapter Text
“Nigredo, or the blackening stage, is the first step in making the Philosopher's Stone, one's Magnum Opus. Nigredo is symbolic of death, decomposition, and decay; the old being destroyed to make way for the new.”
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It begins with anger. Later, recalling the madness of that night, teeth gritted and nails digging half-moons into his palms, Victor will admit to himself as much. In truth, it has always begun with anger: either the icy fury of his Father, searing silently at the dinner table across Mother’s bent head, or Victor’s fiery blows against his creation’s chest, initiating it into a world of violence.
“Pain,” Victor grates out, “is evidence of intelligence, is it not?”
Elizabeth had stated it so certainly, her slender omega body shuddering from the cold, so tantalizingly visible through the sheer green nightgown. She claimed it had been the pain in that accursed thing’s eyes that moved her. Yet Victor’s pain evoked nothing— she had scoffed at the mention of that trifling thing.
No, Victor’s pain did not matter. The creature’s pain did.
“Well,” Victor tells it mildly, knuckles white around the metal rod. “Let’s test the theory.”
The creature simply looks at Victor with wide, uncomprehending eyes. It whimpers helplessly in the face of Victor’s fury, attempting to make itself smaller. It does not obey, or fight back.
In the beginning, Victor had pondered if assembling an alpha was a mistake. True, he endeavored to construct the strongest life form, the perfect being; it had not occurred to him to make anything less. But alphas were not known for their obedience, despite William’s insistence on proving that stereotype wrong. Now though, Victor is convinced the creature is simply too dim-witted to understand even the simplest of commands. The issue does not lie in the rebellion of alpha blood that Victor so kindly selected to flow in its veins— no, it is a lack of thought.
“Give me your leg!” Victor orders sharply, determined to prove the folly of Elizabeth’s hypothesis.
Fearful, the creature cowers. This only stokes the flames of Victor’s ire.
Give me your hand, Victor’s father had calmly demanded countless times, when Victor failed to learn his lessons. Father, Alpha, Master of the house. One who so dearly wished for another alpha son to inherit the Frankenstein name, and had finally pried this prize from Mother’s spent omega body in the form of William; because despite Father’s hopes and merciless lashes, Victor had not ever presented. Victor remained a beta.
And yet, beneath his father’s strikes, Victor had learned, had he not? By nature, like all betas, he’d been barred from entering the world that truly mattered, the unseen struggle for power and ownership in the form of pheromones and claims. However, he’d achieved all that an alpha could by the strength of his will alone. His creation has been gifted with the blood and heritage Victor never had, and yet it dares— it dares to be this useless—
“Leg!” Victor snarls, raising the metal rod.
The creature only folds into itself further at Victor’s strike. Teeth gnashing, Victor waits for any word to pass its lips, anything but those worthless cries and wails. Nothing comes.
“Leg!” Victor yells again, resorting to blows once more. The anger overtakes him like a demon; the hit lands viciously on the creature’s head next. “Come on! Give it to me, you beast! Give me your leg!”
But the stupid thing does not move. It remains kneeling in front of Victor on the plinth, whining intermittently like a dog. A cruel part of Victor cannot help a thrill of satisfaction at seeing the massive alpha shrink in deference. Frustration and the spread of ugly, acidic jealousy have long dissolved his self-control: how flawed, how pathetic the creature is, and yet it must’ve been its wicked pheromones that enticed Elizabeth. She can call it understanding all she likes, but that was not what Victor witnessed. What occurred was simple: Alpha calling out to Omega and thus superseding all Victor could offer, all Victor could be.
“Leg!” Victor shouts, spitefully raising the rod again.
The creature’s hand snaps up, closing around the metal and wresting it away. Its speed is staggering; startled, Victor steps back. In front of his very eyes, the creature easily bends the bar and throws it to the floor, roaring all the while— a primal, pained sound that reverberates and crackles within the darkened holding cell. A sound so deep, so powerful, that Victor feels it rake across his skin.
The change is so abrupt that it cuts through Victor’s outrage like a knife through butter. One moment Victor’s mind knows only shock and anger; the next all thought and reason flickers out. There is nothing but heat. An unrelenting fire takes over Victor’s body, scorching from head to toe.
“Victor!” the creature shouts, thrashing in its chains as Victor sways. “Victor!”
There is... something in the air, heavy and unspeakably intense. Victor’s entire being feels like it will turn to ash, surrounded as he is by the potency of that scent, and yet his lungs struggle to take in more of it. It is a brew of overwhelming electricity and lightning, the alluring petrichor of a summer storm. With each of the creature’s roars, the smell becomes stronger, enveloping Victor’s body in a terrifying blaze. It is as if Victor’s very blood burns.
Victor falls to his knees onto the muddy stone floor. The green silk of his robe gets caught underneath his knees, growing damp. The rain has not subsided, but the cold air or the streams of water do nothing to douse the lava in Victor’s veins.
“Victor!” the creature snarls, metal rattling loudly. “Victor!”
“Impossible,” Victor utters, and yet his body convulses in tandem with the call.
Pheromones. A thread of icy reason makes itself known; stupefied, Victor realizes this cannot be anything else. He has heard descriptions from William and from many others. Moreso, during his medical studies he was taught how to check for pheromone deficiencies and gland defects, the healthy progress of one’s presentation and their advances in learning how to control the emission of pheromones. The scent varies— it retains some commonalities between perceivers like smokiness or sweetness, but an alpha’s or omega’s scent may feel enticing to some, simply pleasant to others.
For Victor, sensing such a thing is not biologically possible. For a beta, which Victor has been all his life, this should not be possible!
Except… he has heard of unique cases, while in Edinburgh. Sometimes presumed betas present late, triggered by an alpha’s or an omega’s pheromones, attuned to them due to their high compatibility. The current theory is that the omega or alpha traits in such betas are so weak they manifest only when prompted by another. Such individuals required one most compatible with their biology to awaken their hidden natures, and deliver them into the throes of their first heat. A mate.
“No,” Victor grits out as the fire continues to blister his veins. “This cannot be…”
But an everpresent clinical part of his mind begins a list of symptoms. High pulse, fever, sweating. Beneath his trousers, Victor’s member has hardened. Behind—between his cheeks, there’s wetness—
“Victor!” The creature’s deep voice crackles like thunder.
The chains clang louder, as if the thing has moved closer. And the overwhelming scent of him, so warm and so inviting, sets all of Victor’s nerves alight.
“Oh God,” Victor gasps. “Oh God!”
He raises his eyes, begging his legs to move, but he is utterly weak. He collapsed too close to the plinth, and the creature can reach him if it tries hard enough. And it will try hard enough. Victor can see it in its dilated pupils, the way it has stopped mindlessly venting its frustration and begun scenting the air.
Victor needs to run. He looks upon the creature’s countenance as it twists into a mix of rage and pure confusion, and mentally screams at his legs to run. He needs to make himself scarce before the biology he bestowed upon the creature manifests violently. But the desperation does nothing to carry him away from it. Its pheromones pin Victor to the ground.
“Victor,” it growls, eyes fixated upon his prostrate form. “Vic-torrrr…”
There is a hand on Victor’s shoulder, strong and gripping tight. Its touch scorches through the silk of Victor’s robe.
“Victor,” it repeats, deeply and questioning, making something—something feral, something inexorable awakening inside him—shudder. Within Victor’s trousers, his cock jerks and weeps. But worst of all, what follows is the foreign and humiliating sensation of his anus clenching around nothing. Of feeling himself empty and yearning for something hard to part his flesh and fill it.
It cannot be! It cannot be borne, that the potential hidden in Victor’s body was not that of an alpha like his Father, but that— of his Mother, of an omega. Alongside the animalistic need making his limbs shake, Victor feels overwhelming hatred for the being he’s made, this monster that is forcing his body to change, forcing Victor to become something he is not, something he does not want to be, something base and sickening…
Omegas are much more fertile than betas, and receptive to an alpha’s will, Victor recalls in his Father’s voice. The lesson had been another painful one. Breeding stock, Father said contemptuously, slaves to their biology and their need to be mated. Victor wondered how Father could speak this way, because wasn’t Mother—the sweetest and the gentlest of people, the one who was Victor’s very soul—an omega? Did she not deserve to be loved and spoken about as a person, and not as if she was some animal whose only value lied in carrying children?
No, his Father had answered, not in words but in actions: Mother dead, once her purpose had been fulfilled.
“No,” Victor whispers, lost in the memory of all the nights he’d spent praying to the Angel as a child on the cusp of adolescence, so afraid of what the morning would bring. “No, no, no…”
The creature grabs him without warning, putting an end to Victor’s reminiscence. Instantly, Victor’s mind whites out. As if from far away, he hears himself whimper, revolting body spasming in the alpha’s hold, overwhelmed by the heat and pheromones that prickle all over the naked skin of his chest.
The thing carries Victor to the platform that’s been its home, so quickly and so easily that Victor might as well weigh nothing. It pushes Victor onto the stone surface, ceaselessly echoing its maker’s name as it buries its nose in the crook of Victor’s throat.
It inhales sharply, as if starved. Victor remembers to be afraid.
“Away,” he croaks, limbs incapable of movement beyond twitching, still made weak by the alpha’s scent. “Get… away…”
Through sheer desperation, he manages to push against the creature’s chest. Immediately, the creature snarls into Victor’s neck, as if brought to anger once more by Victor’s attempted rejection.
“Victor!” it roars again, loud and deafening, warm breath rushing over Victor’s collarbone. It raises its head to look at him, pained and angry and accusatory— as if he’d thought Victor was trying to strike him again. And Victor…
Victor shudders and whines. His legs fall open to accommodate the bulk of the creature’s body. That wretched, commanding sound makes the heat that’s wrecking his insides flare ever brighter; some horrific part of him wishes to beg for forgiveness, to apologize, to beg the alpha to— to just—
Despair grips him. For how long will Victor even be able to hold on to the thread of reason? When every part of him wants to succumb, every part of him twitches with the need to be touched, to be taken, to be pumped full with the alpha’s seed and bred, finally made into something valuable. When his throat bares itself in the hope that the alpha will sink his teeth in and claim him, finally someone’s, finally marked as precious…
Good God, Victor realizes, mind too addled to identify the largest threat until now. If his treacherous body is now one of an omega, this means it can bear children. And Victor knows very well what the likelihood of pregnancy is, when an alpha and an omega spend their heats together. He knows.
“No!” Victor shouts, something heavy and unnamable roiling in his gut. “No, please…”
All that Victor can think of is Mother’s corpse and her cold face as he affixed the death mask upon the coffin. Her killer had been her own body, forced to turn against itself by a callous and uncaring husband— forced to carry the leeching life of another, and then left for dead.
Victor would rather die than share in that fate. He has created life without birth. He will not let himself be consumed by an alpha’s greed, not like Mother! Energy renewed by pure fear, Victor uses every ounce of strength to attempt to flee. But the creature’s hands dig into his forearms, keeping him supine onto the stone. No amount of scratching at the unnatural limbs induces movement.
“Get… off me,” Victor snarls, but his words are becoming slurred. “Don’t touch me!”
For the thousandth time, he curses the creature’s ignorance and slowness; of course, the thing could not truly understand him! And yet, in the past, it had at least proven intuitive enough to read tonality. It had learned to retreat when Victor sternly told it Stop, or Let go, or Don’t touch me.
But that timid, cowering creature is nowhere to be found now. Victor has angered it beyond repair, beaten it into becoming the alpha he’d wanted. It refuses to stir and tightens its grip on Victor’s arms, dark eyes blazing with rage and yearning alike. It seems entranced by Victor’s smell, by the pheromones undoubtedly pouring out of him— and part of Victor wonders how he smells to it, what undercurrents fill its nose and beckon it forward. It leans over Victor and unashamedly licks down his throat, groaning as it does so; down Victor’s chest, ever downwards, until its mouth closes around a nipple.
“Nngh—no,” Victor breathes in desperate fury, arching unwillingly against the alpha’s tongue.
Its mouth is so hot as it sucks greedily around the sensitive nub of flesh. The sensation sends ripples of lightning down Victor’s spine, causing more of that disgraceful slick to seep into his ruined trousers. The alpha knows no restraint, as if it's seeking for absent milk and fully dedicated to finding it. It swirls its tongue and caresses Victor’s nipples in a frenzy that has him pant harder and harder, helpless against the assault of mind-numbing pleasure.
“Victor,” the creature rumbles against Victor’s abused chest. “Victor, Victor…”
Of course you are, Victor remembers telling his creation delightedly, on the first morrow he’d glimpsed its form. Perhaps that was true. Out of the two of them, there is only one winner now, one conqueror. It makes Victor’s teeth ache with rage and misery, because why, why would this happen to him? Why would the Angel desert him so, let him be turned into breeding stock underneath the being he’s made, underneath what was supposed to be the incarnation of his triumph?
Mindless of Victor’s breakdown, the alpha pursues an unseen path down Victor’s abdomen until it encounters the barrier of his trousers. It does not hesitate to drag them down Victor’s thighs, divesting him of them entirely. Victor’s legs are only capable of kicking weakly, in such a small show of resistance that the creature does not seem to register it. All Victor has left now is the green sleeping robe, open around his chest and sticking wetly to the stone, useless in shielding him from anything.
The air is cold against Victor’s fevered skin. When the creature licks down Victor’s aching cock—torturously warm and slow—he sobs.
The alpha appears utterly bewitched, murmuring its maker’s name as Victor pants and bites his lips, undone by its mouth on his member; yet it does not seem to be after Victor’s pleasure. It only seems to want to taste, to eat. Its mouth moves even lower. Its strong hands brazenly grab the swell of Victor’s ass to push it apart, exposing his drenched hole.
The shame and horror is unending. Feeling the alpha’s warm tongue breach him, Victor moans loudly and shudders through an unbearable wave of arousal, cresting and carrying his mind away in the undertow; his opening flutters and his member soils his abdomen and the side of his robe with seed, twitching weakly. The creature pays it no heed. It kneels at the foot of the platform and licks large and hot stripes against Victor’s entrance, growling as it does so. Its fingers flex painfully around Victor’s ankles, though Victor feels the discomfort as if through the haze of a dream.
“Victor,” his creation rumbles, sliding his tongue inside once more.
Alpha, Victor’s heated body replies. Instinct is a hydra with many heads that Victor is incapable of keeping at bay any longer. Accounting for his creation’s proportions, Victor recalls painstakingly selecting the largest and most dominant alpha he could find on the battlefield for his creature’s cock. His alpha’s cock. He’d carefully set it in place, carefully stitched him up, and had—wondered—
“Come here,” Victor breathes, trying to sit up and escape the relentless assault of warmth, burrowing into him. He wills the alpha to understand. “Come… here, damn it.”
A hidden side of himself begins to unveil teeth, set loose by the fire incinerating Victor’s conscious mind. A hunger. A void unbefitting the alpha Victor emulated in all aspects of life. Something that frequently made him take out the figure of the anatomical Venus he’d kept from his studies with Father, displaying the stages of pregnancy in a female omega; something that drove him to defy the edict that said the creation of life was the sole power of the alpha inseminating an omega. Oh, betas can try and sometimes even succeed, but there is nothing like an alpha’s seed to make an omega’s womb bear fruit.
Victor misses Mother, always. Victor is alone. All he has is his Dark and wooden Angel, who does not speak or love him back. And if death has robbed Victor of his sole companion, perhaps he will force death to yield him another.
“Come here,” Victor repeats, the thread of sanity all but broken.
The alpha grumbles, but ceases his caresses and raises his head. Their eyes lock for a moment, and Victor feels an outpouring of emotion choke him: a tenderness he’s felt and suppressed many times while gazing upon his creature, this being he’s brought into the world. It was a need to provide so intense it hurt, making him scramble in panic and confusion. Victor had no earthly idea how to accomplish such a thing as caring.
“Victor,” his creature—his alpha mutters greedily, licking lips that are shiny with Victor’s slick.
Victor spreads his legs wider. The gesture of submission seems to smother the remains of anger in the alpha’s face, in the heady scent of his pheromones. Head tilted, the creature watches in fascination, but only for a moment.
“Alpha,” Victor answers, low in his throat.
It is only animal instinct that follows. Mindless, wholly irrational, and Victor’s body sings with the freedom of it. The alpha finally rips away the crude bandages wrapped around his groin, releasing his own hard cock. It is daunting in its dimensions—much larger than what Victor recalls, now that he can see it erect. It might tear Victor apart, and yet he wants it. He wants it inside him with a hunger that burns away all thought.
“Victor,” the alpha groans as he kneels upon the plinth. He lines himself up between Victor’s thighs, large hands spanning almost the entirety of Victor’s waist.
Victor’s member spasms on his stomach. The creature’s black and doleful eyes, depthless in their longing, find Victor’s own and refuse to release his gaze. The alpha’s cockhead eagerly pushes past the ring of muscle, opening up the virgin channel; Victor keens at the stretch, painful and yet impossibly satisfying. The way is so slick that the alpha encounters barely any resistance. He steadily pushes forward, burying himself inside Victor’s ass to the hilt.
“Yes,” Victor realizes he is saying, “yes, yes…”
Now that the alpha is not attempting to subdue him with pheromones, Victor’s body has regained some strength. He is now capable of wrapping legs around the alpha’s torso, drawing him in deeper and arching against the stone. He knocks a heel into the creature’s scarred and muscled back, urging him to move. The alpha rumbles Victor’s name in amazement, and Victor feels the vibrations rattle his ribcage.
The need is unquenchable. The alpha slams into Victor’s hole, relentless, feeding on the moans that stream out of Victor’s mouth. The flames of pleasure licking up and down his spine become all that Victor knows, all that he craves. The pitter-patter of the rain and the clanging of the creature’s chains all fade. The world is narrowed to a point, to the sensation of the cock filling him to the brim— so massive it scrapes against Victor’s prostate gland unfailingly. It affixes him to the earth; it anchors him to a present he has never been able to fully inhabit, overactive mind always running itself ragged. But now, as an omega spread around his alpha’s cock, all there is to chase is the heat.
Victor does not need to divine how to give gentle words or caresses, things he has only ever known how to bestow upon a mother long dead and buried. He does not have to skewer himself on the cross of caring; all he needs to do is open wide and let his creature take. All there is to think about is the feeling of his thrusts, the rough invasion of Victor’s insides, the hunger that yearns to feel the moment his alpha spills his seed, buried to the root so that it might reach as deep as possible. So that it might make a home of itself there, in Victor’s newly fertile womb.
The thought causes twin horror and delight in Victor’s chest. It makes him sob and tighten around the creature’s member, nails scraping painfully against the stone around him.
“Victor,” the alpha growls above him, still seeking his eyes. “Victor!”
The alpha’s hands grip Victor’s hips tighter, as if to drag Victor back from the gaping maw of fear. He shoves himself as far inside Victor as he can, ripping a wail out of him, pinning him to the stone and fucking him in an animalistic frenzy that makes electricity coil and snap within Victor’s gut.
Victor gives himself over to it completely, to the void in him that is just so infinitely pleased at being wanted. The alpha leans closer now, gaze clouded and searching as it rakes across Victor’s face, taking in every twitch and every shadow of expression. His mouth hangs open as he breathes in Victor’s air. Suddenly, Victor wants to taste him, and he cannot think of any reason why he might not. He brings a hand to the nape of his creation’s neck, pulling his head down until their lips meet.
The alpha makes a surprised grunt. This act, all of the mechanics of coupling, are new to him. Victor knows. The knowledge makes it even better when he feels the alpha open his mouth and allow Victor to lick inside, letting Victor show him. Still thrusting, making Victor cry out between heaving breaths, his creation learns quickly. His tongue tangles hotly with Victor’s own, becoming bolder each passing moment, until he takes control of Victor’s mouth like he’s conquered everything else.
Victor whines, legs tightening around his alpha’s waist, teeth nipping at the plundering tongue. The creature groans, the sound so low it is almost a purr, a subterranean growl emanating from his chest; and then Victor finally feels it. The twitching of his alpha’s cock within him, the rush of hot and sticky liquid drenching his insides.
No, Victor thinks in abject terror. At the back of his head, a voice wants to scream.
“Yes,” Victor moans brokenly instead, spine arching. The silk of his robe sticks to his arms now, damp with sweat. “Give it to me… beast!”
He’s writhing in pleasure so absolute it becomes agony. Victor’s hardness spurts where it is trapped between his abdomen and the alpha’s own, his hole clenching around the creature’s cock until it milks the organ of every last drop. The both of them breathe heavily, their intertwined pheromones heady and mouth-watering. The frenzy has lessened somewhat, placated by the promise of reproduction, but the hunger still burns. The alpha nuzzles at Victor’s throat, his member hard as stone inside the newly-made omega, who is drowning in the warmest feeling of contentment he has ever felt.
His alpha is so large. He is beautiful, with full lips and eyes as dark as midnight, cheekbones sharp and cutting. A youthful, angelic face that Victor has tailored precisely for himself, just so. Helplessly, Victor’s hand comes up to stroke his creation’s jaw, trace the edges of the scars there— the lines that make the alpha look like the crisscross of stained glass, in the windows of a church.
The alpha rumbles, pushing his face into Victor’s hand like a touch-starved animal. He begins to reposition himself, pulling out of Victor’s body so he can sit up upon the plinth. When he drags Victor into his lap, Victor can only surrender to it, whining at the feeling of loss. He is burning still; the fire has not been doused, not yet. As they face each other, the creature spreads Victor’s legs on either side of his waist, raising him up without any real effort.
Victor’s hole spasms greedily in anticipation. The robe flutters as it falls to the floor, removed by the creature's roaming hands; once freed, Victor’s arms come up to encircle the alpha’s shoulders. He keens as he is penetrated once more, his own weight pulling him down onto the creature’s cock. The slide is incredibly facile, made impossibly slick by Victor’s own secretions and the alpha’s seed.
The alpha begins to thrust up insistently, holding Victor in a vice-like embrace, making it clear he sought skinship and closeness. The pleasure is exhausting, neverending. Victor’s body is nearly limp against the creature’s own; he allows his alpha to use him, letting him bounce his body up and down his member as he sees fit. All Victor can do is sob and tighten his arms around his alpha’s neck, raking blunt nails over the ridges of freshly healed scars, each time the massive length inside him brushes against that sensitive spot.
“Victor,” the alpha whispers into his maker’s hair. “Victor…”
His rhythm quickens, becoming increasingly wanton. Growls and moans vibrate between their chests. The alpha’s pheromones sink into Victor’s body like needles, prickling beneath the skin. It is as if the creature is trying to drown him in them, to tattoo a mark onto Victor’s skin in the shape of his own scent. With his head resting on the alpha’s shoulder, Victor cannot discern why the alpha would not simply claim him.
This body beneath him and around him, this body that knows the feel of Victor's fingers both inside and out— it is Victor’s. Victor has built him. All of him belongs to Victor. It is only right that Victor pulls away just enough to look his alpha in the eye and teach him how to make Victor his in turn.
“Like this,” Victor whispers as he takes his creation’s face between his palms and guides it to the crook of his neck, pressing it there.
The alpha stills his movements. Victor shivers in his arms, waiting. He feels his creature inhale his scent and moan, he feels him twitch where he’s buried within Victor; and then finally, there’s a sharp burst of pain.
Victor arches and screams. He reaches completion untouched again, at the sensation of his alpha’s teeth sinking into his neck— the implacable feeling of a thread beginning to coil around him and his creation, the being that belongs to him. The omega gland bitten there takes in his alpha’s pheromones, pulsing uncomfortably.
Victor’s creation changes his maker’s body once more.
Still not letting go of Victor’s throat, making him writhe in blinding pain and pleasure, the alpha purrs and fucks up into him a few more gratifying times. His release comes soon after. It expands within Victor just as warm and fulfilling as before— and right as a tendril of cold terror touches Victor’s mind, tinged with reason, his alpha unlatches his mouth and murmurs, “Victor. Victor.”
Perhaps for the time being, the frustrated voice of Elizabeth rings into Victor’s ears, that word means everything to him.
An ancient instinct within Victor shushes and soothes. It makes the tingle of his alpha’s seed, trickling down Victor’s thighs, feel like a gift. It tells Victor that an alpha who thinks of him as the world would protect him; he would not let Victor die; he would not sacrifice Victor’s body for the promise of a child, like Father had done.
With a growl of his own, Victor cranes his neck to locate his creation’s collarbone, finding the soft flesh at the hollow of his throat. When his teeth breach the skin there, the alpha groans; the cock inside Victor quivers and erupts once more. Victor does not let go until the taste of blood sours the inside of his mouth, until the bond between them settles and brings sunlight into Victor’s void— lights up the dark firmament of the world. Only then he surges upwards to slot his mouth against the creature’s own, devouring it entire.
The drunkenness of the heat is yet too strong for Victor to understand the horror of what has transpired. He’ll face that later, when he wakes at the first rays of sunlight, cocooned within the arms of his mate.