Happy Together 07

Landstuhl, 2006: My body, my choice (I)

Summary:

"How long will it take to recover the body?"
Please don't tell him that they will have to bury an empty coffin. Sarah and Henry couldn't stand it. He doesn't even want to think about what it would do to Viper.
"To recover...?" Captain Oxley sounds surprised for the first time. "No, Rear Admiral, sorry, I didn't speak clearly. Commander Mitchell's plane was hit by enemy fire, and he had to eject. He had time to radio his squad before being captured."
"The what?!"
His scream wakes up Sarah and Ron. He turns on the light on the other side of the bed. She leans over the beta's legs to get closer to Tom.
"What's happening?" asks the omega.
He looks at her with a fear he never expected to feel again creeping up his insides toward his throat.
"It's Mav. He's..." he focuses on the phone again. "Did you say that the Taliban has Maverick?"

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Fandom: Top Gun (Movies)

Relationships: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw / Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Original Male Character(s), Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Ron "Slider" Kerner/Sarah Kazansky

Characters: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Ron "Slider" Kerner, Sarah Kazansky

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Implied Mpreg, Grammarly is My Wingman, Forced Pregnancy, Abortion

INDEX: https://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/p/happy-together.html

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Maverick

The engine's noise wakes Mav up, but he doesn't move. He learned it in his foster care days: if you don't recognize where you wake up, pretend you're still asleep. In his years of drunkenness and poor sexual decisions motivated by that drunkenness, he has refined the technique. So even though the left side of his body hurts like hell, he keeps his breathing steady and strains to hear the dialogue happening above his head.

Four voices converse in Pashtu with some Dari terms. His knowledge of the language is basic, enough to talk about the weather or order in a restaurant - if the Taliban allowed restaurants - so the subtleties escape him, but what he understands fills him with relief: they only managed to shoot down his plane.

Good. That means his strategy worked, and Lieutenant Donelly led the rest of the squad back to base. He can picture the alpha's scowling face in his mind, barking instructions to carry out the commander's latest order. Joseph is dark and wiry, with a round face and calloused fingers. He grew up in an Irish family in Alabama but fell in love with Shannon Christie, an omega obsessed with aeronautics, and followed her, first to college, then to ROTC, then to flight school. Joseph Donelly will herd the squad back to base, and as soon as he lands, he will scream until he is hoarse to request a rescue operation.

He doesn't know if the higher-ups will authorize it.

The truck stops, and two of the Taliban get out and start pulling on his legs. Okay, it's time to wake up. He appears to react to being pulled, but being very disoriented and ignorant of the language. He repeats "Where am I?" several times until they silence him with a slap. Only then does he allow himself to be searched - although they already did it when they captured him before knocking him unconscious with a rifle butt - and they take him to the entry of a tunnel in the wall of the mountain. He walks very slowly because the pain on the entire left side of his body is real. Very real.

It hadn't been long, but he managed to see they had arrived at an esplanade in front of a mountain wall. The ledge is large enough to contain only fifteen or twenty buildings, all of which appear temporary. That means that whatever the Taliban have set up takes place mainly inside the mountain.

Bad, bad. There is no protection from radars and cameras like the rock walls generated by Mother Nature. The tunnels are natural, perhaps memories of immemorial volcanic activity? But the ground is flat, there is good lighting, and he does not feel the heaviness of the air usual in poorly ventilated underground areas. This means that it is a base built long ago with resources.

After the slap on the esplanade, he is in no hurry to find out how the Taliban react to prisoners with curious eyes, so he keeps his face forward and his eyes downcast. The torture will come. There is no need to rush that. His downcast eyes are consistent with his clumsy walk. No one has to know that he is counting steps and looking for markers at ground level, such as crossing points for cables and pipes - it is not possible to hide wiring when working on natural stone - or openings to secondary tunnels.

As they move deeper and deeper into the network of galleries, the soldiers talk to each other. Nothing telling, of course, but he understands that they plan to leave the first move to the American government: if they launch a search operation, they will know that he is valuable and will act accordingly. For the first time in a long time, Mav thinks that being an omega gives him a slight advantage.

Finally, they reach a different hallway. The left wall is bare stone. To the right, there are slightly rusted metal doors with small windows closed by bars at the relative height of an adult and trap doors at ground level. He notes with a heavy heart that there are barely three meters of separation between the doors. They stop in front of the third cell, and one of their captors lifts the heavy, arm-length bolt from its hook attached to the wall.

The door opens without squeaking.

There is nothing: no toilet, bed, or sleeping cot. It is just a cubic space excavated in dark stone, barely illuminated by a timid light bulb in the center of the ceiling more than two meters high.

The door closes behind him.

Iceman

"Kazansky," he says into the phone automatically.

Beside him, Ron moves a little but doesn't wake up. Their spouses have become accustomed to calls at any time.

"Rear Admiral, this is Captain Oxley, squadron leader of VFA-33. Assigned to the USS Reagan."

Ice sits up in bed, feeling a cold draft touch the back of his neck and run down his back. He knows precisely who Daniel "Ace" Oxley is because he studied his file carefully before pulling strings to have Mav and three other young omega pilots assigned to the newly formed Squadron 33, nicknamed Wolf Pack. He didn't know to what extent Ace was aware of his role until now. Still, his voice doesn't shake.

"I'm listening, captain."

"I want to inform you that Commander Mitchell was shot down two hours ago during a patrol mission in southern Afghanistan."

Ice takes a deep breath and lets it out very slowly. He looks at the clock on the nightstand, 4:30 a.m., and automatically calculates what time it is in Kabul, eleven hours ahead of San Diego, 3:30 p.m.

"Was he on a morning patrol?"

"Yeah. They intercepted them with anti-aircraft guns in a canyon where activity had never been reported before."

Oh, if Ice had a dollar for every time he's heard the words "never before" in a sentence involving Pete Maverick Mitchell. But it is not a time for thought but to act. Ron is waking up and wants to be able to tell him something concrete.

"How long will it take to recover the body?"

Please don't tell him that they will have to bury an empty coffin. Sarah and Henry couldn't stand it. He doesn't even want to think about what it would do to Viper.

"To recover...?" Captain Oxley sounds surprised for the first time. "No, Rear Admiral, sorry, I didn't speak clearly. Commander Mitchell's plane was hit by enemy fire, and he had to eject. He had time to radio his squad before being captured."

"The what?!"

His scream wakes up Sarah and Ron. He turns on the light on the other side of the bed. She leans over the beta's legs to get closer to Tom.

"What's happening?" asks the omega.

He looks at her with a fear he never expected to feel again creeping up his insides toward his throat.

"It's Mav. He's..." he focuses on the phone again. "Did you say that the Taliban has Maverick?"

Sarah lets out a moan. Rum swears.

"That is the theory we are working with, yes. I know you are nothing," he pauses and says the next word with an unmistakable intonation: "official to Commander Mitchell, but I thought you might want to know."

Yes, yes, of course. Once again, Tom lets convention allow him to overcome the horror with a modicum of composure.

"Thank you," he forces himself to say, "your kindness will not be forgotten."

"One last thing. The commander developed a friendship with another officer in recent months."

"A close friendship?"

"Very close," Oxley confirms. "His name is Musgrave, Commander John "Fox" Musgrave."

The line disconnects. Tom feels like the mattress has disappeared and is in free fall.

"Fuck Mav."

Maverick

The light does not turn off.

He roughly knows what time it is because hunger is a good indicator of time, but he's unsure how long his system will last. If they start spacing out meals... There are no windows, and within a mountain, there are no temperature differences between day and night.

There is nothing to mark the walls, and the light does not turn off.

It turns out that at the bottom of the cell, there is a slight depression with a hole in the center. It is the only place where he can relieve himself, right in the center of the surveillance window's field of vision. Potential humiliation aside, he was worried about the smell and rats or something worse crawling from the hole. Then he heard the murmur. A stream of water runs beneath the cell. It should be a meter or meter and a half deep. Close enough for it to take away the prisoners' waste. Far enough away that no one can reach in and… what? Drink contaminated water and commit suicide due to diarrhea? It sounds unlikely, but he read "The Count of Monte Cristo" to Bradley about six times. He knows that jailed people do the most extravagant things to achieve freedom.

He forces himself to stop that line of thinking. He and Edmundo Dantes have nothing in common, and, above all, he cannot allow himself to think about Bradley.

Even his smell changes when he thinks about him. They've told him so.

At least the silence is not absolute because the murmur of the water is always sweet.

One of the fundamental differences with Dantes is that he is an omega. His captors didn't realize it, but his body will process the dose of chemical blocker in a maximum of seventy-two hours, then…

There is a wealth of information about what the Taliban do with their alpha and beta prisoners. They like to make videos of alpha beheadings. They consider it top-quality propaganda. Betas are tortured in the most creative ways. It has something to do with the fact that betas are believed to be resistant, long-suffering people in this region. Breaking the will of a beta is a challenge. That is also propaganda.

As far as Mav knows, there's no idea what the Taliban would do with an American military omega. Since they expelled the Soviets and took over the country - Viper always said that making deals with fanatics was bad business - Afghanistan has been an off-limits territory for foreign omegas. Even other Muslim-majority nations warn their citizens about the danger that omega people face in Taliban territory.

Since the war on terrorism began, the Taliban government has managed to kidnap two omegas from Western countries: a French nun and a Norwegian teacher who worked in the mountains of Pakistan. Their countries paid the ransoms without question. Nobody wants to go on TV to explain that they left a poor omega in the hands of the Taliban. But they were not defense personnel. Above all, they were not Americans.

Maverick sighs and shifts his torso slightly, attempting to find a less uncomfortable position. He made a pillow from his outer jacket and has been trying to move as little as possible not only because of the constant pain in his left side but also to save energy and postpone as long as possible the moment when the chemical blocker finishes the cycle within his body.

At least he thinks nothing is broken. He could be wrong.

When he was twelve, he was thrown down the stairs one Saturday. The beta in charge of the foster home told him not to cry because giving birth hurt more. He had to stay out of their way if he didn't want the alphas to push him. On Monday, his breathing problems landed him in the school infirmary; it turned out he had a couple of cracked ribs.

So he doesn't know but hopes he didn't break anything.

They have fed him five times through the hatch when the door finally opens. So it must be early afternoon of the third day. He sits with his back against the wall and forces himself to remain still. A soldier points an AK-47 at him and moves the barrel up and down while shouting, "Stand up" in an atrocious accent. He gets up slowly, without hiding his pain.

It is better if they undervalue his ability to move.

When he is upright, the soldier steps back and motions with one hand to get him closer. Mav limps toward the door, tense as a wire. Will its authentic smell be noticeable now? But the couple waiting for him in the hallway doesn't react.

They take him through seemingly identical galleries, a different route than the one they took before, but he can make out the cable boxes and other discrete markers. Finally, they reach a room where, he has to blink several times, there is a window that looks out. More than the light, what excites him is the fresh smell of the air. This is not an atmosphere recycled by engines. Almost the entire opening is blocked by a gigantic satellite dish whose cables run down the wall and extend to a table with a computer and a camera pointing toward a stage already set up in the center of the room.

Oooh! They must trust a lot on their encryption program to dare to broadcast live. What an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

The setting is nothing surprising. White floor and sides, the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in the background, a chair in the center, where they lead him, pushing him with the barrels of their AKs because he continues with the dazed and slightly annoyed face of someone who does not understand what is being said around, although he knows that understanding it is vital.

He knows that the intelligence analysts will dissect even the smallest detail of this video, so he assumes a posture that makes it evident that his left limbs were damaged in the fall. Someone pulls his hair to force him to raise his face. The little light on the camera's top turns red, and the message begins.

The alpha on his right starts talking in a bombastic tone about the power of the Taliban and the divine mission, etc. He tries his best to keep his face impassive and reacts only when his name is mentioned. He looks at the camera and blinks at carefully rehearsed intervals. Just once, he can't risk the beta operating the camera noticing something strange.

The transmission ends. They force him to get up and begin the slow return to his cell. At one of the divisions, they pass under a vent. Mav sighs softly, content with the sudden current of air that briefly caresses his forehead, cheeks, and neck. Behind him, the guard also takes a deep breath. Pete feels his breathing become an inarticulate sound of surprise and outrage, and he lowers his head just in time to avoid the slap. By instinct, he presses himself against the wall, lets himself fall, bends his legs to cover his torso, and puts his arms over his head. Above him, there are screams and hurried steps. The two guards stand in front of him, their backs to him. Someone throws a blanket over him.

Damn, what a moment for the blocker to stop working.

After what he counts as between five and ten minutes, someone pulls at the blanket. He blinks to get used to the light again and sees in front of him an omega woman who extends her hand to him and repeats "stand up, stand up" with – this is interesting – better English than his jailer. She's wearing a purple burqa, and when Pete finally stands up, he gasps in surprise after realizing she's taller and stockier than the two alpha soldiers.

"Silence," she warns.

He closes his mouth.

The omega puts a dark cloth scarf on his face at the height of his nose, which she ties behind his head. Then she puts the blanket over his head and closes it under his chin.

"Let's go," she orders.

They set off very slowly towards another part of the cave complex, the Omega Wing, which is much deeper in the mountain.

Shit.

Iceman

The call from Washington comes four days later. They were climbing the walls at home but knew they must wait for the intelligence department to take the first step. After all, they are no longer officially related to Pete. That doesn't mean they were standing still. Ice alerted Cougar and Merlin in DC and Hollywood in Bahrain. He also began quietly passing control of the San Diego base to Slider.

So when the call came, he was ready.

Just before boarding, he gets a text from Oxley: "Musgrave is on the loose." Ah, he thinks as he finds his seat, so I'll have to spend time reminding him that I don't care if his daddy plays golf with the president.

An officer is waiting at Dulles.

"Rear Admiral Kazansky, sir! I am Lieutenant Jack Harmon, sir."

Ice looks him up and down. The lieutenant has the body of a chick raised in a glass jar and lively eyes. The uniform fits him very, very poorly. He deduces that this one was recruited from the university because, with those arms, it would have been impossible for him to go through any military training.

He nods.

"Good afternoon, lieutenant."

"I was ordered to take you to the Pentagon, sir."

Without saying more, they walk towards the exit. It's not until they're on the highway that Ice notices the traces of nervousness: Harmon clenches and spreads his fingers as he drives, his eyes oscillating between checking the rearview mirror and throwing him sideways glances. He decides to

be direct.

"Is there a problem, lieutenant?"

"A...? No, not at all," he says too forcefully.

He seems to realize how fake sounds and laughs nervously.

"You... You are a hero, rear admiral. I... I never thought I could... You are the architect of the Wolf Pack. What it meant for our…" he blushes. "I mean! For the Navy."

Ah, so that's what it's about. Ice sighs, relieved and happy. He would much rather be recognized for something he built than for the lives he destroyed.

"I didn't do it alone."

"No," Harmon quickly agrees. That's why we have to rescue Commander Mitchell. I tell you now that we are alone. You can count on me and with..." he hesitates, opens and closes his fingers around the helm again. "With several omegas and allies in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Green Zone of Kabul, Musgrave won't get away with it."

Tom raises an eyebrow, silently asking.

"He returned to DC yesterday. He asked for stress leave," he snorts contemptuously. He goes around saying that he is Commander Mitchell's fiancé and that they will get married before he is discharged from Landstuhl Regional Hospital."

"Really? Does the story include showing a ring with a sad face?"

"Of course! A ruby surrounded by diamonds. An ugly and corny thing."

Ice feels like he has stopped carrying a tremendous weight and smiles. Until now, he had doubted... John "Fox" Musgrave didn't seem like the kind of alpha Pete fancies, but it could be that... After all, they barely speak since he sent him to Iraq five years ago as the second in command of the Wolf Pack. Could it be that Pete actually found someone and didn't tell them because… Why would he have any obligation? After all, Viper kicked him out of the clan.

But clearly not. If Musgrave doesn't even know which ring to select for Pete, then it's just sex. That's fine, of course. Maverick is an adult and has the right to enjoy his body. After Carole's death, he acted almost like a widower or like an omega being courted. He puts that idea aside immediately. It's absolutely bizarre. That was one of his most significant changes after the Bradley disaster.

He would go to the bars of San Diego and come back, reeking of cheap alcohol and sex. They let him be because, without a doubt, this promiscuous Maverick was better than the almost catatonic Maverick they had rescued. Although fucking strangers didn't seem to give him peace. Sometimes, he didn't even dare to enter the house when he returned from his escapes and would try to get rid of the stench with the garden hose. Sarah would say, "All things have their own time," and turned over in bed while Ice stayed in the bedroom window, watching his friend shiver in the backyard. His wife was right, of course. One day, Pete decided to stay home and play with their kids instead of going to meet some nameless alpha at a bar, and they knew the worst was over.

At the same time, the ring's existence reveals another worrying circumstance. No matter how much money you have, rings take time. Musgrave had planned to propose to Pete. Why? What would make the alpha think his friend would accept, even though the choice of the rock indicates that he has never talked to Pete about it?

He will pass that investigation on to Henry and his network of omegas.

They arrive at the Pentagon, and the lieutenant leads him through endless galleries and elevators. Finally, he opens the door to a small conference room with a table with four seats and two alphas. One is short and stocky, with dark skin, large eyes, and thin eyebrows. She is tall and thin, with very white skin, a long face, delicate cheekbones, light blue eyes, and marked expression lines between her nose and lips, as if she laughed a lot. But now her thin lips are a thin line, without a trace of amusement.

"Rear Admiral Kazansky," the first one comes forward, "I am Captain Luther Stickell, cyberwar specialist."

"Captain."

"I am Colonel Max Mitsopolis," the hand he shakes is thin but firm. "Liaison between the Navy and the Army in this case."

He raises an eyebrow, questioning.

"Sit down, please," Mitsopolis offers and heads to the table. "Can we offer you water, coffee, another drink?"

"No, I'm fine, thank you."

"This is the file," Sticell informs, handing him a folder with the "confidential" seal in red.

Tom opens the file and scans its contents cursorily. There is nothing new here: Pete's profile, the patrol report, the transcript of the frantic minutes while they maneuvered to evade enemy anti-aircraft fire, and his message of having reached land alive, "although a little bruised." He looks up at the colonel, who does not hide her curious expression. He closes the file with deliberate gestures and purses his lips.

"Something new?"

Mitsopolis smacks her lips and sighs.

"Two videos arrived yesterday," she gestures towards the captain.

Stickell turns a computer toward Tom and activates the first video.

Despite being predictable—he has already seen numerous videos of these during the five years of war—the scene is disturbing. This time, it is not about an unknown person but about his friend, his unruly little brother. Pete looks pretty bleak, really.

"Is the left side of his body wounded?"

"It seems so," replies the captain. "It would be consistent with his last message."

Mav's eyes move. If what he understands is correct... He purses his lips, displeased.

"Did you decode the message?"

Stickell and Mitsopolis exchange a brief look, but not so fleeting that he can't recognize it: frustration.

"We decoded it. He is using the original Morse system. But we don't understand the reference," the colonel admits reluctantly.

The colonel's blue eyes are inquisitive and challenging, and her features also smack of skepticism. He has to control the urge to laugh. They called him to DC because the entire Navy knows that Iceman Kazansky is Maverick's wrangler, but it seems the Army has doubts. He doesn't have time for these games.

"I don't suppose they can pick up the signal from your subcutaneous transmitter either?"

"No," Stickell confirms. "It should have become activate thirteen hours ago."

Yes! That confirms it. Tom removes his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose, and puts them back on.

"The message is "I Gollum," his two companions nod. "It's the name of a character from a little-known British fantasy novel. It means that they have him prisoner inside a mountain."

"Oh!" says the captain.

The colonel just purses her lips even more and stares at a corner of the office.

"Yes," Ice sighs, suddenly feeling very tired. "The second video?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

The captain moves his fingers quickly over the keyboard and shows him the second transmission.

The first thing that surprises Tom is that it was sent only two hours after the first. Mav is gone. However, the alpha who said all the usual nonsense in the first message now occupies the center of the screen. He seems angry: his pupils are dilated, a vein pulses in his forehead, and he waves his arms vigorously. Tom isn't fluent in Pashtu, but it doesn't matter. Not only was whoever prepared the copy kind enough to incorporate subtitles, but it's also not difficult to understand that the rant relates to the Taliban leader discovering that Maverick is an omega.

He calls him a "bitch." Of course, he didn't expect him to say "omega" since the term came to Pakistan from the English colonizers, but in the Muslim world, the convention is "third gender" or "carriers." He calls him "bitch" as if his only value was his uterus. He has to conjure the image of his father, forever immobile in a white oak box, to prevent his rage from showing.

 Ultimately, the leader asks for a sum in exchange for Pete. Three times what they demanded in the first message. If not, he assures, he will break him himself. He doesn't try to stop the cruel laughter that the stupid phrase elicits in him. Stickell and Mitsopolis look at him in puzzlement, but he doesn't bother to explain. That man is dead, and he doesn't know it.

"Start negotiations, but demand proof of Captain Mitchell's life every week."

The colonel grimaces at his imperative tone, but he doesn't give her time to say anything.

"Have the intelligence people create an excuse so they take him to take sunlight. Include that in our demands."

"Rear Admiral, I remind you that the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists," she finally says, exasperated.

"And I remind you that these terrorists have the most decorated American aviator of the second half of the 20th century and of the 21st, an icon of omega rights. Ask the Senate Intelligence Committee who will go on TV to explain that they abandoned Commander Pete Maverick Mitchell to be raped by the Taliban. And if CNN doesn't scare them, you can mention Jonathan Musgrave. He plays golf with the president and wants Pete to become his son-in-law."

Captain Luther Stickell looks at him with open admiration. Colonel Max Mitsopolis, on the other hand, watches him with an intrigued expression. She realizes that that is not the actual plan. He decides that Pete is more important than his prestige as a cunning strategist. Pete needs everything he can. So he smiles.

"He just needs time to recover. We have to give him that time. We won't have to pay the ransom," he says with a caustic smile.

He can see the moment the pieces click in Mitsopolis's head. She smiles, too. His teeth make Tom think of a guillotine.

Maverick

The omega area of ​​the complex is deep in the mountain, but the cells are more comfortable. At first glance, it looks like where he was taken the first day, a hallway with five cells, but the interior is very different. These cells seem to have been designed for long-term stays.

Pete is tied to a chain embedded in the back wall, and the handle is lined on the inside with soft leather to prevent sores. The chain allows him to reach halfway into the cell, so the door is entirely out of reach. Instead, a bed is carved into the back wall with woven furs and blankets. In one corner is the hole through which he can hear the already familiar murmur of the stream that carries the shit out of the complex.

The light does not go out.

It does not matter because he can hear the sounds of the other omegas. He identifies five adults and numerous children's voices, many more than there should be in a military camp. Here, time won't become an incoherent and empty thing. The one who brings the food is always the same omega who picked him up in the hallway. She doesn't speak, and her face is covered by a veil, but he likes her green, attentive eyes. How she carefully studies the space and Pete before entering reveals intelligence and some kind of training about threats - formal or by imitation. She hasn't spoken to him again either, but she does talk to the prisoner in the cell next door.

Maybe it's paranoia, but he doesn't think it's a coincidence that he listens to these conversations.

Three days after the big reveal, as he's calling it in his mind, two armed alphas come to get him. When he comes out, he notices that the omega area is empty. Only the lead omega is standing in front of a green door. He pretends not to pay attention to the detail.

They lead him through a series of new galleries until the hallway opens to the sky. He stops, amazed, but is pushed with the barrel of one of the AK-47s and continues walking towards the light. It turns out to be literally that: an opening in the mountain wall through which sunlight and fresh air enter. He drops to his knees and lets out a couple of stubborn tears. This was Tom's idea, he's sure.

It's so beautiful to feel the light on his skin. Even his side hurts a little less.

He sighs, clumsily opens his shirt to expose as much skin as possible, and casually brushes against the mesh that closes the window and turns the deadly cliff into a beautiful solarium. He recognizes the metal by touch: steel and copper.

It couldn't be that easy.

He is taken to the transmission room four days later to make a proof-of-life video. He transmits a short message, "FRDY." Ice, and perhaps some of the useless people at the Pentagon, will understand that his sun sessions every forty-eight hours will help him recover but won't help the Navy locate him. The grid works like a Faraday cage, covering the gaps where the mountain wall isn't thick enough to block the signal from the subcutaneous transmitter.

By the end of the second week, the pain is almost gone, and he begins a cautious exercise routine. He can't afford to go too far and damage his body again. When the alphas come to "visit" the prisoner in the cell next door, he concentrates on the push-ups and blocks out the screams of pain with his own labored breathing.

Pete knows they let him hear the sounds of torture on purpose. They can't damage his body if they want the ransom. That doesn't mean, of course, that they don't try to "teach him a lesson" by proxy. Bastards. He also listens to the chief omega when she goes to heal the prisoner. She speaks in Pashtu and English. The prisoner never answers. He has no idea if it's to maintain some dignity, out of exhaustion, or because (he shudders just thinking about it) she's unable to speak.

In the third week's video, he gives them a message about his estimate of the distance between the site of his capture and the mountain. If they can't locate him precisely, at least they can inform the ISAF troops in the area so he doesn't die by friendly fire when they see him running in their direction. Between the walks to the solarium and the communication room, he already knows quite a bit about the complex. He only has two obstacles to escape: shoes and the chain that ties him to the wall.

Of course, they keep him barefoot. They are Taliban, not idiots. Precisely because they are not idiots, the galleries are exceptionally clean, as they also deny footwear to the rest of the omegas, and they would not be helpful if they cut their feet walking through the complex. The strategy is to allow them free movement within the complex but make it almost impossible for them to escape the mountain. Pete has located the closet where they put the shoes that are not in use. There are many pairs of boots, and he has no aspirations to recover his own, but it doesn't matter because they are organized by size. He will only grab some that fit him.

The chain is the part he doesn't see yet how to solve it. The key is the chief omega. He doesn't think he can surprise her when she brings him food. For a start, she always stops a reasonable distance away from the maximum reach that the chain allows him and pushes the tray with a cane. He's also not sure she has the key on her at these moments. On the other hand, the omega has dropped too much casual information for it to be involuntary. The time of the guard changes, the name of the alphas who come to torture the omega in the cell next door, and the number of children under her responsibility.

He cannot know if she wants to help him or is trying to gain his trust to snitch on the Taliban. After all, some omegas support the caliphate and its horrible interpretation of Islamic law. He has to think about it a little more. He focuses on following his exercise routine to regain strength on the left side of his body.

Four weeks into his capture, Maverick realizes that something is wrong with his body: his breasts are tender, his abdomen feels slightly swollen as if he were in peak anestrus, and the food he has devoured so far without paying much attention to it is repulsive, and this is the tenth time he had to pee today. Could it be some illness, or is stress finally catching up with him?

He sits down and mulls it over, carefully reviewing the events of the past four weeks and his body's reactions. Then it dawns on him that… shit!

He has been on this mountain for almost thirty days, and even allowing for the delays induced by the accident and the stress of his kidnapping, he should be halfway through anestrus, feeling relaxed and clean, uninterested in his appearance, and sleeping like a baby. Instead, he's swollen as if his heat had just ended, and his dreams are restless, filled with hands roaming his thighs and lips clinging to his pussy.

He realizes he's never felt the cramps characteristic of the diestrus. Since turning forty, he can feel how his uterus sheds to remove the lining every two months and how everything twists to reorganize itself for the next cycle. Hannah, Merlin's omega, sent him some pills that do wonders to control those cramps. It's not a paralyzing pain, but he doesn't reject anything that helps him be one hundred percent focused on the plane and his squad.

Why didn't he have the cramps of the diestrus, and why doesn't he feel the relaxation characteristic of anestrus now?

Sitting cross-legged with

his back to his cell door, Maverick counts using his fingers. A dread begins to form in his mind, and he can't... He does the math over and over again, with almost feverish desperation. Thirty days since his capture, his last heat was fifteen days earlier. His estrous cycle is like an atomic clock. It has always been so since he presented at age twelve. Neither the m

alnutrition of his years in foster homes and college nor the stress of flight school changed it. Not even when he lost Nick and Bradley did his cycle faze.

So why now?

But it can't be. John always uses condoms. Except that...

They asked for shared leave to enjoy the heat without interruptions. His lover acted as if it were a big step in their relationship. He took him out to eat. That is, they went to get hamburgers and then to a motel half an hour from the base. There, John had a surprise for him: his beta Owen had traveled from DC, where he works for the State Department. Pete thought it was time to cut this relationship because Fox seemed too enthusiastic and even talked about him going to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Vermont. But he was not going to refuse to have sex during his heat with such an attractive couple. John is good in bed. It turns out Owen is not far behind.

Pete doesn't really remember the last two days of his heat clearly. Those forty-eight hours are usually the most intense and fertile of the estrous cycle.

A cycle that didn't follow the pattern it should after those days of undeniably top-quality sex: fifteen days of metestrus, when the uterine lining develops and ovulation occurs; fifteen days of diestrus, when cramps indicate the degeneration of the corpus luteum; fifteen days of anestrus when sexual desire drops to almost zero.

Forty-five days have passed. His body should be beginning the week of proestrus: with a tight, moist vagina, emitting pheromones to attract alphas and betas interested in his next heat. Instead, he can barely smell himself and, most importantly, he never had the contractions that announce the reabsorption of the egg and the endometrium.

Pete feels terror rising from his belly to his throat like a cold, paralyzing wave. He's pregnant.

Then comes the rage, hot, overwhelming, that stains the grey stone walls of his prison red. The mere thought that John and Owen would dare to… "It's not Bradley's," is all he can think. "It's not Bradley's," is the only argument he needs to know that this is unacceptable. "It's not Bradley's," not only because Bradley doesn't love him, but because he would never betray him like that.

How was John planning to keep him from noticing? Oh, right, he was going to tell him to take the diestrus pain pills before the cramps started. The Navy's mandatory chemical suppressants would mask the change in his scent, and none of his chicks, not paranoid David Shawn, not curious Ron Kovic, not observant Shannon Christie, would notice, even though they spend most of their day together at the base.

After that, it would be too late.

Finally, the calm comes, soft and light as a spring breeze. He can't wait for the Pentagon's useless minions. That evening, when Leader Omega comes to drop off dinner, he speaks to her in Pashtu.

"My name is Pete, and I have to get out of here. Can you help me?"

--------------------------------------------

NOTES:

The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC), also known as Landstuhl Hospital, is a US Army post in Landstuhl, Germany.

Estrus Cycle:

The basic idea of the entire A/B/O universe is that our species, homo sapiens, does not have menstrual cycles but rather estrous cycles. Mammals share the same reproductive system. However, animals with estrous cycles resorb the endometrium if conception does not occur during that cycle. Mammals that have menstrual cycles shed the endometrium through menstruation instead. Humans (homo sapiens), elephant shrews (the 16 species of the order Macroscelidea), and a few other species have menstrual cycles. Most mammals have estrous cycles (bleeding around is not helpful).

Heat refers to the period of the estrous cycle called "estrus." The word "estrus" comes from the Latin oestrus' horsefly', 'madness,' 'poetic inspiration,' and from the Greek οἶστρος oîstros. Likewise, "zeal" comes from the Latin zelus' ardor, zeal', and this is from the Greek ζῆλος zêlos, derived from ζεῖν zeîn 'to boil.' Some species of animals with estrous cycles present unmistakable external manifestations of receptivity during their estrus, for example, swollen and colorful genitals, behavioral changes, or mating calls.

Estrus cycle: Proestrus - Estrus (heat) - Metaestrus - Diestrus - Anestrus

Gestational cycle: Proestrus - Estrus (heat) - Ovulation - Implantation - Gestation - Childbirth

INDEX: https://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/p/happy-together.html