Ego
“Do you really think all omegas want to be fucked by you? Sorry to break it to you, but you can fuck off.”
Harry regretted the words immediately after he said them. He wanted to inhale them back into his throat, to bite his tongue to keep the insult from leaving his mouth. But it was too late to take them back now, he had already shoved his foot as bloody far as his throat allowed.
Harry held his ground despite the sudden twitch of Riddle’s lips, as if the man was trying valiantly to repress his amusement at the sight of an Omega mouthing off at him. It was a look Harry was all too familiar with after years of suffering through Riddle’s presence. It was startling how little Riddle had changed since they both graduated from Hogwarts.
“Oh? Are you suggesting that you’re not interested in me, Harry?” Harry scowled at the amused tone in Riddle’s voice, noting how the man’s nostrils flared to take in his scent in the crowded street. Riddle looked more intimidating than ever, if Harry was being honest. Harry recalled how tall the man had been back in school—how meticulously dressed and imposing he was in class, but this image presented before him was entirely different. He looked predatory, like a snake carefully luring its prey into its nest.
It made Harry more than a little uncomfortable. Before Harry could think to say something, Riddle beat him to the punch, stepping slightly closer to where Harry was standing in the street.
“You smell just as exquisite as ever. That slight pungent smell of your fear, and…” Harry swallowed when Riddle’s eyes dropped to his lips before flickering up back to Harry’s eyes. “…your arousal, how interesting. That certainly hasn’t changed.”
Harry resisted the embarrassment that wanted to crawl up his cheeks, focusing instead on the fact that this man practiced dark magic and spent the majority of his life working in a shady store in the back of Knockturn Alley. It was quite ridiculous that the man would even suggest that Harry was attracted to him. It was absolute rubbish. The man didn’t know a single thing about Harry.
But why did his heart feel like it was ready to burst? Why did Riddle’s smell just as intoxicating? So very warm and familiar? It was terrible.
“Clearly a mistake. I’d sooner fuck a blender before I let you lay your filthy hands on me.” Harry snarled, choosing at that precise moment to leave. The situation was getting out of hand and Harry rather not lose any more control than he already had. He was still on his suppressants and a good few weeks away from his heat—there was really nothing for him to fear.
But just the threat of this man’s presence was enough to put him on edge. Riddle was dangerous, if the fluttering of his instincts was anything to go by.
This man was a devil.
Harry knew that he was, but this attraction between them certainly made things difficult to shove aside. If only Riddle was ugly—if only evil did not look that damn good in a pair of tight trousers. But it certainly made plenty of sense that evil would be this appealing. The devil’s job of seducing its hapless victims would be much more difficult if the monster was as hideous as popular media suggested.
It certainly sucked Riddle didn’t smell all that unpleasant either.
“You can lie to yourself all you wish, Harry. But you certainly cannot lie to me. Your scent tells me something else entirely.” Harry shuddered at the dark note in the Alpha’s voice, both irritated and upset that Tom decided to pursue him down the street to Diagon Alley. But Harry otherwise did not respond, knowing well that there was no point in arguing with the man. It was always best to ignore him—to not meet Riddle’s fire with his own because that would definitely lead Harry down a rabbit hole he’d rather not go.
Instead Harry focused on trying to gather his senses, overwhelmed entirely by Riddle’s scent despite the array of other smells in the crowded street. It was incredible how hyperaware Harry was of Riddle, of how the man’s presence was both suffocating and magnetic—something Harry had always hated in the man since his days back in Hogwarts.
If someone had told Harry during his first four years at Hogwarts that he would hate Riddle as intensely as he did now, he would have laughed in their face. Riddle was always polite and courteous to him—a beautiful mask perfectly in place when speaking to all the students in the school. He was a role model—the golden boy of the school. But, Harry mused, things certainly changed after the incident his Fifth year.
The death of Myrtle Warren and Hagrid’s unfortunate expulsion.
Harry knew Hagrid had not done it, the bloke was soft and kind. He was a bit strange and had a worse knack for getting into trouble than Harry himself did, but acromantula could not paralyze students. If it had just been Myrtle that had fallen victim, Harry would have found it more believable, but Hermione and a slew of other students had been paralyzed.
Everything in Harry’s mind screamed that there was something strange going on. And the fact that Riddle somehow roped Hagrid into the mess just left an acrid taste in his mouth. Harry found that he could not truly trust the boy after that.
But at that time, Harry still had not been entirely too suspicious. He had given the boy the benefit of the doubt. Surely, he could not have purposefully gotten Hagrid expelled.
And then Riddle presented as an Alpha, Harry presenting just shortly after as an Omega. It certainly changed both how Riddle regarded him, and how Harry perceived him. The tension between them more pervasive—more volatile in nature.
It was obnoxious at first just how distracting the man’s scent had been—his presence enough to make everyone swoon. Harry, to his chagrin, especially.
It made Harry feel weak and unbalanced in Riddle’s presence. Like at any moment Harry’s heat was going to engulf him completely and rob him of his agency. It didn’t help matters that he could smell the heavy stench of dark magic on Riddle’s skin.
With that development, his suspicions of Riddle became more concrete. No one else seemed to notice the scent of darkness on the man’s skin but Harry, and it drove Harry mad when others gave him strange looks whenever Harry shot a dark look at Riddle.
They thought him infatuated with Riddle—obsessed. But it was more than that, Harry was afraid. He was afraid of his awareness of the man, of how day after bloody day Riddle’s aura grew steadily darker until it was practically impossible for Harry to be around Riddle without choking.
And his smell.
Harry did not want to think about how delicious it was. Like dark chocolate and cloves.
Harry wanted to groan aloud at the trajectory his thoughts had taken, but resisted the impulse when Riddle continued to linger behind him like some love sick puppy. He knew that ignoring him was the best option, but damn it, it was difficult with the man’s smell driving him mad.
“Don’t you have something better to do? World domination to plan? Is that head of yours so thick that you can’t see I don’t want you anywhere near me?” Harry seethed, turning down a narrower alley, a short-cut Harry normally took to work.
He had little time to think before Tom shot a bruising grip over his arm, and shoved him harshly against the wall. He could smell the cloying scent of Tom’s hormones, the muskiness overwhelming his senses so suddenly that he didn’t resist when Tom trapped his hands behind his back and pressed himself entirely too close to Harry’s frame.
“I wonder…” Harry swallowed when Tom’s nose pressed into the nape of his neck, his breath scalding as he sniffed at the skin. Harry did not know what Tom was looking for, but he sincerely hoped he didn’t find it. It was difficult enough that he needed to take suppressants to mask some of his scent from the noses of other Alphas in the wizarding world—he didn’t wish to up his dosage simply on the account of this arsehole. Especially when his body unwittingly melted underneath Riddle’s body like putty.
“…if you would still be this brave and defiant if you knew what I was capable of.” Tom ground his hips into Harry’s arse, and Harry exhaled a sharp breath, air whooshing out of his lungs as he tried to process just what was happening. His body was burning up, a strange haze overtaking his vision when Riddle’s scent became headier, something spicy and rich making it harder for Harry to breathe.
Merlin, he smells like—
Harry’s skin felt warm, his hands clammy with sweat. He was entirely too anxious and nervous, the proximity of Tom’s mouth to his throat a threat Harry had not been prepared to deal with when he had woken up this morning. Harry felt like he was being pulled in two different directions. He tried not to think of the other more pressing thought nagging at him at the back of his mind—one that Harry was both unprepared and unwilling to deal with. A side of himself yanking and resisting his common sense and fear.
Like how good Riddle felt pressed up against my—
“Sod off!” Harry stiffened when he felt Riddle’s teeth graze his neck, entirely too close to where his bonding gland was, before regaining enough of his senses to struggle beneath the Alpha. Harry tried to kick and buck the man off, but Riddle had thoroughly trapped him against the wall, his legs pressing hard into the back of Harry’s knees to prevent him from escaping. Harry tried to ignore the feeling of Riddle’s heat against his skin, of the hardness of Riddle’s cock against his arse when he unwittingly ground grinded against it in his struggles, but when Riddle groaned—
Harry only grew more desperate to escape.
His teeth were too close and—
“Or would it simply excite you that I could crush you…?” Harry made to protest but Riddle’s warning growl stopped him, the heat of Riddle’s mouth on his bare neck making Harry swallow hard. “Or is it that you already know how dangerous I am, and you can’t help how much it excites you. Is that it, Harry? ” Harry wanted to object, to deny it because he wasn’t attracted.
He couldn’t be.
Riddle was a dark wizard. The man had no place in Harry’s future. Riddle had framed Hagrid and had possibly killed Myrtle Warren. This man was evil.
“I’d rather be put under the Cruciatus curse than suffer another second in your presence, Riddle.” Harry snapped, letting out a snarl of his own when Riddle’s teeth pressed warningly into his neck. Harry was frightened that the man would actually bite him, then, but he didn’t curl into himself.
Harry may have been an omega, but he certainly was no coward.
Harry yelped when Riddle suddenly released him, scrambling to regain his balance before turning a spiteful glare on Riddle.
Harry was immensely glad that Riddle had chosen not to bite him. He had no idea what he would have done if Riddle had.
Riddle’s scent was still overpowering him, but it was a relief nevertheless to be away from Riddle’s scalding touch. It made his skin tingle too strangely—it brought to life an urge Harry dared not think on. It was already bad that Riddle’s teeth had been pressed too intimately over his neck. He didn’t wish to let his hormones run amok when still in the presence of an Alpha.
He doubted he could handle any more humiliation at being aroused by this show of force.
“Run then, little Omega, if it pleases you.”
Harry felt no shame when he did just that, cursing the fates for throwing him back into Riddle’s orbit. He thought he would never see him again after graduation. He certainly hoped it would be the case. The memory of Riddle’s too dark eyes and beautiful face enough to bring back memories of a time when Harry had entertained the idea of sleeping with Riddle—of giving in to the promises percolating in his eyes and the intoxicating smell of dark chocolate in his breath. But it seemed it was too much to ask for. Fate had a funny way of just ruining his carefully laid plans.
Like making me want Riddle to bend me over and—
Harry did not dare pursue the thought. His cheeks burning and his insides fluttering with the arousal he positively did not feel.
Harry was just about to turn the corner when he heard Riddle speak again, the sound of it making Harry pick up even more speed.
“But know this, there is nowhere on this earth that can hide you from me.”
Harry felt both hot and cold as he threw himself into the crowd of bustling wizards. Riddle’s rich baritone following him all the way into his office.