pretty little distraction. part one.
alpha rafayel and alpha caleb work together to free lemurians from omega auctions. but during a routine rescue operation, rafayel finds himself uncharacteristically sidetracked.
when he returns to the car, he carefully deposits a trembling human omega in the backseat. caleb has questions.
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It’d been three months since the last Lemurian had appeared at auction. Three months since their last successful rescue. It consumes him: saving them; sparing them from a fate often far worse than their human counterparts. Human omegas at least had a chance of being treated with kindness. Rafayel knew well that was not the case for his people.
In two nights, there would be another auction with a Lemurian as the centrepiece.
Rafayel buries his hands in the deep pockets of his heavy winter coat, careful with his footing on the icy concrete as he makes his way across the carpark. A spattering of other late arrivals are also making the frigid trek towards the building lit up ahead of him. Some are in groups, loud in their shared excitement for the night ahead. Some walk alone, like him—dark figures with bowed heads.
This auction house ran it’s events the way most mid-sized operations did. Weekend one-day auctions were routine, and when they got their hands on a Lemurian, they’d hold a special event that operated over multiple nights. Starting with a few nights of regular human offerings and culminating in one night focused on the Lemurian’s sale. These multi-night events would give Caleb and Rafayel time to scout the places out and figure out their plan of attack.
Tonight was the first night of bidding. All human lots. All Rafayel had to do was get a layout of the place, look for weaknesses. It was always worth being thorough, leaving the door open for lucky opportunities. At one of their first rescues—a smaller establishment unused to the attention a Lemurian lot would bring—he’d been lucky enough to swipe a set of keys and walked right out of the place with his target under his arm.
If only it was always that easy.
It had gotten progressively worse since then. The more they rescued, the more paranoid the auction houses and buyers became. Eventually, they’d need another approach entirely. But for now, the routine worked: pre-auction viewing to send a warning to their target, scouting the venue, snatch the target during post-auction exchange.
Pre-auction viewing usually commenced a week before the big night. Rafayel and Caleb would enter during the busier hours, with the crowds. Rafayel would make sure the little omega had spotted him among the bodies that circled their small viewing enclosure. It would ensure cooperation when they did come for them. They’d see the Sea God’s glowing eyes among the crowd gathered around their cages, and they’d know He would be coming for them. They’d know to be ready. Not to be afraid.
Shrugging his shoulders up, he fills his lungs with his last taste of the crisp winter air before slipping past a loud group of alphas clogging up the entrance—entering the overwhelming chaos of the auction hall. They’re always dark, noisy and overwhelming. It was intentional. They wanted people to feel invisible. To encourage even the most self-conscious, guilty, morally-conflicted spectators and potential buyers through their doors.
Rafayel finally escapes the bottleneck of bodies near the entrance and presses himself into a gap at the back wall. It’s slightly elevated, allowing him to make a scan of the large venue and make note of exits and layout.
“All good?” Caleb questions through Rafayel’s earpiece.
“All good,” he replies. “There’s an armed guard at each door. Pretty standard.”
“Keeping the serious security out the back,” Caleb adds, sounding calm. “Eventually, they’ll get so lazy in the auction rooms, I won’t be able to resist grabbing them directly from the stage.” A puff of air buzzes through Caleb’s microphone. “I doubt they are paying the kids in there enough to even try and shoot me on the way out.”
“Yeah, well, as long as they’re armed–”
“Too many bystanders,” he interrupts. “I know. I’m the one who talked you out of the idea, remember?”
The loud thrum of a room packed with at least a thousand excited people lifts louder as a group of omegas shuffle onto the stage. It’s nothing new to Rafayel. He’d probably seen more omegas in his life than most alphas alive. It’s so routine that the sharp anger that rattled him during their first few rescues had long-since dulled into a festering pit of disgust.
Only humans could do this to their own.
He watches the bidding from the shadows, eyes flicking across each terrified face lit up by blinding stage lights. At least the intense lights offered the tiny trembling humans a little heat. They always looked so cold.
Once the bidding well and truly stirs up the crowd, and all eyes are on the entertainment, he makes his way through the crowd. Make mental notes of exits, security rotations, any points of weakness. Then he could get the fuck out.
He finds an alpha slumped against one of the emergency exit doors, head hanging between bent knees. It was early in the night be knocked out by drink, but he’d seen worse.
There should’ve been a security guard here, like at the other emergency exits. They are always quick to toss inebriated bodies out into the night, so the door had been unguarded at least as long as the man had been slumped against it. Rafayel slinks back into the crowd, checks his watch, and waits—eyes flicking between the stage and the unguarded door.
Each lot is sold, one after the other, tiny human offerings pulled off stage when each of them is done facing their fate and hearing their monetary value.
Rafayel waits. Patient. Focused.
The unconscious alpha slumps over onto his side.
He checks his watch. 10 minutes without intervention from any security.
A point of weakness.
Caleb’s words rattle around in his head. At some point, the risk would have to be taken. Their approach was getting too predictable, and opportunities like this were too tempting to pass up.
The crowd jostles him a little as a new group is bought on stage, eager to get a good look at the new batch. Unlike them, Rafayel is focused on the man at the door. Another alpha steps out of the sea of bodies and kneels down in front of him.
He can’t tell if the man is security or a good samartian. His line of sight is obscured with the movement of the crowd, and when he attempts to shove his way closer to his point of interest, an elbow nearly smacks him in the jaw.
An impassioned alpha shouts out a bid—roars it—directly in Rafayel’s ear. Then he raises his numbered paddle with equal enthusiasm, and Rafayel is forced to dodge it.
It’s enough to break his focus on his task. It’s only for a moment. His eyes instinctively flick up to the stage, towards the focus of the man’s eager attention.
That’s all it takes.
One moment of distraction, and his life is thrown off-course.
The ringing in his ear, caused by the man’s roar, seems to spread to the other without any cause. He can hear nothing around him. Just a dull hum and a high pitched whine echoing in his skull.
You’re dressed like the rest of them: a flimsy shapeless unbleached piece of fabric hangs off you, ending just above your knees. It’s almost sheer. Almost. It gives the impression that if the lighting was a little different, it would be.
It’s all intentional.
Everything about how you are presented to the crowd is intentional. Even down to the slightly raggedy nature of the dress. Omegas of all genders wear the same little sack. It makes them look… in need, wanting; clean and kept but… unloved. To nurture and provide was an instinctual desire for alphas. A need these evil fucks hoped to trigger in potential buyers.
Rafayel had laughed, hollow and bitter, the first time he’d realised all the tiny insidious ways they were targeting alpha instincts. “How human,” he’d spat, releasing his frustration at Caleb as he’d slammed the car door closed.
“What is?” Caleb had asked, starting the engine.
Rafayel hadn’t known how to answer. It was one of his first times in a place like that. He couldn’t process it: how they… how humans had so successfully ignored their own protective instincts to cause harm to the very people they were supposed to protect. Not just individually. As a whole society, in an organised manner. They were ignoring their own instincts enough to cause harm but were still aware enough of them to be able to weaponise them against each other.
“Cruelty,” Rafayel had muttered in response, suddenly finding himself too drained to offer any other explanation.
Frozen in place, with his ears still ringing, Rafayel drags his eyes over you now, searching. He doesn’t know what he’s searching for. You have something he needs.
Searching.
Searching.
The trembling girl to your left darts her hand out to grasp yours as her sale is finalised with a slam of the gavel. A flood of adrenaline floods his system as Rafayel’s eyes snap to the sudden movement on stage like it’s a threat. There’s no threat, his rational mind shouts.
Someone shoves into him.
He stumbles forward.
The girl grasping your hand is scanning the crowd. Maybe searching for her new owner, or maybe for the exit—one last desperate, hopeless instinctive look towards freedom.
There’s a tug somewhere deep inside him, reminding him he should be looking at exits too. That’s what he’d been doing. He had a task. A man slumped across the emergency exit closest to him. He’d been distracted from his task. His neck even twitches a little at the thought, like his body wants to turn towards the exit, but finds itself paralysed by an invading parasitic host that has taken control.
His ears are still ringing.
Your lot number is called next.
Rafayel doesn’t hear it.
You’re entirely still, like him, eyes fixed over the crowd.
He wonders if the lights are hurting your eyes.
The girl beside you is tugged away, and when she reluctantly releases her grasp on you, your arm hovers awkwardly out from your side—stiff and unnatural.
He’s never seen you before.
He searches his memory desperately for any trace of you.
Nothing.
So why does he knows you.
He’s looking at a face he’s never seen before in his life and feeling instead like he’s looking at someone precious to him. Not just precious. Someone resurrected from the dead. It’s a flood of emotion like he’d been missing you for lifetimes and had now, finally, found you. His emotions are incongruent with reality to such a degree, he wonders if maybe he’s dreaming, or dead.
A bony elbow jabs into his ribs hard enough to bruise.
Sound floods back into his skull.
The auctioneer is shouting numbers out across the hall. The current going price.
Your price.
You are being bid on.
Someone is about to own you—take you away.
The voice in his ear snaps the tension in his body like a jolt of electricity, and it’s only his years of masking all his emotion—of keeping his cool in places like this—that prevents him giving any physical indication at all that he’d been startled.
“Status update,” his partner says through his earpiece, business as usual.
He’s asking.
It’s a request for information.
Rafayel is aware he should answer.
His eyes settle on your clenched fist, grasping tightly to the fabric of your dress now that you’ve lost your one hand to hold. That hand was gone now. Sold.
Rafayel lifts his sleeve to his mouth to communicate with his partner. “Call in and bid on lot 520,” he orders, letting no trace of his dazed state leak into his voice. “Secure her.”
A beep. Another beep. The line opening and closing. A buzz of empty static fills his ear. Caleb had opened the line and let silence hang.
The buzz cuts off.
A second or two of dead line.
Then, “Secure lot 520?”
This wasn’t normal. Nothing about this was normal. There was no precedent for this. They didn’t participate in the auctions. Ever.
Rafayel watches as the auctioneer searches for a higher offer, gavel raised like a threat. Dread turns his gut inside out, his eyes flicking between you and the lanky man threatening to take you away forever.
“Do it now,” he hisses, panicked.
His heart thumps rapidly in his chest as he imagines you being dragged off… to be collected by some other alpha. A feral urge to surge through the mass of bodies and climb up onto the stage runs like an electric current through his muscles, shocking him still. He even considers the unguarded door with the drunken man. Fuck bystanders. He’s a man suddenly afraid of himself—out of control—paralysed in that microsecond before fight or flight.
The lanky auctioneer points his gavel at a woman at one of the phones with her hand raised. Caleb had called. The tension leaves Rafayel’s body in a flood that nearly brings him to his knees. Caleb has an instruction, and he wouldn’t fail him. He knows it now like he’s always known it. It was one of two things he grasped onto in his darkest hours: the ocean and it’s people were his, his responsibility; and Caleb would never, ever fail him.
He begins to weave through the crowd, partially freed from his paralysis. He can move his body freely, but only towards you, and his eyes never leave you. Drawn towards you like prey hypnotised by a glowing light pulsing in dark ocean depths.
The noise around him dulls to a muffled buzz again, entirely tuned out.
He’s close enough now to see your fingers are pale at the tips as you squeeze white fabric like a lifeline. He wants to reach out and pry them free—to hold your hand in his—transfer them to the lifeline he could offer instead.
Your eyes are still fixed at the back of the hall. He doubts you can see anything at all with the stage lights pounding down on you. Still, he looks up at you, and wills you to see him. His lips move with his silent pleas. Look at me, he begs. Over and over.
The gavel drops.
Sold.
It looks like a string snapping. Like you’d been a puppet, forced by your invisible master to keep your body held up on the stage in one position, and now, released, the lifeless puppet pools into a mess of limbs on the floor.
He has to press his nails into his palms until he’s sure he bleeds to stop himself giving into his urge to jump the barrier and climb the stage. Maybe Caleb was right. Maybe no one in the room cared enough to shoot him.
But if they did, they could hit you.
He watches as two men step out from the shadows, lift you up, and carry you away.
The moment you slip behind the curtain, out of his sight, he staggers back, his own string snapping.
There’s a big dark empty pit inside him. One that had existed before he’d entered this hall. How was it possible he hadn’t paid it much mind before now? He can feel the shape of it, the depth, the space it carves out from his flesh.
Caleb’s saying something in his ear again. The final price. The price they had paid.
“Can I get her now?” Rafayel fires back in response, breathless. He’s shoving his way through bodies as he fails entirely to keep the desperation from his tone. Caleb will know something is very wrong if he hadn’t before. This isn’t how their missions usually go. It’s not how they’ve ever gone before. Not in all the years their years together.
Silence.
And then, “I’ll finalise it and send you the authorisation to collect her.” A pause. “Should I remain in place?” It sounds like many questions in one.
Rafayel knows, even if his frenzied state, it’s only the trust and bond between them that saves him from an on-the-spot interrogation through his earpiece.
“Yes,” Rafayel responds, bursting through the crowd of bodies and into open space, breathless. “Stay in place. We’ll be out.”
We.
Him and… you.
He presses his palm to the cool concrete wall, catching his breath and regaining his composure. The noise and chaos floods back around him slowly, a welcome distraction from the throbbing pit of absence in his chest.
There’s a ramp to his right, leading down into the collection hall.
He straightens his coat and tie and makes his descent, composure restored—at least to any eyes that happen to pass over him.
When his hands start trembling, he shoves them in his deep coat pockets.
Steel mesh separates his walkway from another. The one mirroring his descent, ascends up to a separate exit, where newly purchased lots could be led out by eager owners without having to battle through the bustling, inebriated, crowd in the auction hall.
A towering man passes him on that other ramp, separated from Rafayel by mesh, and trailed by a shivering figure in white. Rafayel scowls, eyes catching on the little omegas bare feet.
They didn’t even clothe them properly for collection.
It was mid-winter outside. Cold enough to see his own breath as he’d marched from the car to the entrance. He shoves his hands deeper in his coat pockets at the memory. Pausing, he fishes out his discovery: a woollen beanie buried in the deepest corner of his right pocket. It was one of Caleb’s, likely stuffed into one of Rafayel’s pockets out of convenience during a previous outing. He shoves the hat back down again and tries not to think about how Caleb will react when he discovers Rafayel has no explanation for what he’s done.
He sits in the waiting area, staring at his phone in anticipation of authorisation paperwork, and slowly, gradually, returns to himself. His heart rate steadies along with his trembling hands.
What the fuck had just happened to him?
Mates were fairytales. A fantasy long relegated to the past—before omegas had faced a population decline so sudden and catastrophic, the entire structure of human society had cruelly shifted to compensate. There was no space for the fantasy of finding YOUR omega. Not in the corrupted hell humans had built for themselves.
His phone buzzes in his hand. Rafayel sucks in a steadying breath as he refocuses on his task: collect you, get out. Until you were physically by his side, outside this pit of moral decay and desperation, he wouldn’t take an easy breath. He clenches his palms and swallows the anxiety down, and by the time he catches your scent in his nostrils, he’s a picture of calm composure.
He knows it’s your scent before he sees you, like he recognised a face he was seeing for the first time. It’s so familiar, it feels like a childhood memory. All emotion without the details.
You’re still dressed solely in that scrap of almost-sheer natural white fabric. And with a gentle shove from the woman who had led you out, you shuffle to stand at his side. You’re all-consuming presence beside him feels entirely out of proportion with the reality of you: tiny, cowering, and shivering.
He hadn’t noticed you shivering on stage. Either he was too far away or you were colder now. Or more afraid. His stomach flips at the thought. Why wouldn’t you be afraid of him? He was your new captor. Another in a long line for an omega born into a world such as theirs. And for all you knew, he wanted something more from you than anyone that had come before him. That’s what people bought omegas for, after all. He swallows, suppressing a wave of nausea.
Refocusing on his mission of getting the fuck out of the place, he shakes a clammy hand over a desk, collects a large envelope containing his certificate of ownership, and leads you towards the ramp—hyperaware of any potential threat between you and the exit.
He resists looking down at you as he leads you up that ramp towards your freedom. He knows you’ll be feeling anything but free.
Rightly so, really.
The envelope feels heavy in his hands.
There’s a small seating area at the top of the ramp, tucked a little to the side, out of the way of any natural route to exit the building. He quickly leads you into the small nook, drops the envelope on the floor and begins to tug his coat off, rushed and pumping with adrenaline now the exit is so near. You stumble back a step, clearly startled by his frenzied attempt to free himself of the heavy wool.
He freezes, the heavy coat hanging from one arm, paralysed in response to your little display of fear.
Nausea wracks him again.
He takes a shaky breath, forced to inhale a lungful of your fear in the process. Bitter.
You were so afraid. Afraid of him.
“It’s cold outside,” he starts, gently. “I’m just going to put this on you, okay?”
Your eyes are fixed at his feet, and you are entirely unmoving. Apart from an uncontrolled tremble as a shiver racks your small frame.
You aren’t running, or stepping further back. That’ll have to do.
His hands tremble, matching you, as he drapes the heavy coat over your shoulders. He hesitates, suddenly nervous about releasing its full weight onto you. An image of your crumpled body under the stage lights flashes in his mind, unwelcome.
But then you thread your arms into the sleeves and wrap the oversized coat around yourself, cocooning yourself in the remnants of his body heat still clinging to the fibres.
A little marble of warm light rolls into that dark pit inside him, bouncing in the bottom, echoing. He’s done something good for you—provided—and you liked it.
He could do so much more. God, he wants you to know how much he’s willing to do.
You lift your shoulders up a little and tuck your chin into the cocoon you’ve made, like you’re attempting to bury yourself in the cashmere.
The beanie.
He takes a small step. Then hesitates. “I’m just–” He moves like a stalking cat trying not to startle a mouse. “–getting a beanie from the pocket.”
A painstakingly slow dip of his hand into the nest you’ve made around yourself, and then he steps back quickly, successful in his delicate extraction.
“Can I…” he trails off, gesturing awkwardly with the navy blue beanie. It’s covered in Caleb’s scent, flooding Rafayel’s senses with a comforting familiarly as he waves it in front of him.
No shuffling away. That’ll do, he supposes.
Slowly, he lowers the beanie over your head, finger brushing the shell of your ear.
Your eyes snap up to meet his.
He freezes.
He’s bent over at an awkward angle, arms acting as a bridge between your bodies, held stiff where he’d been working to arrange the hat so it wouldn’t fall down over your eyes.
You blink up at him, eyes watery, either from the cold or emotion. He wishes he knew which.
It wouldn’t be until much later that he’d fully process it, but something about the way you look at him now triggers the first stages of a spiralling thought: Why did he instruct Caleb to bid on you? Why had he so instinctively side-stepped all his long festering disgust and participated in the human torture system instead of snatching you from your buyer’s hands like they did will all their Lemurian rescues? The envelope with the papers certifying his ownership of you slides under his boot on the floor as he shifts his weight. What… the fuck… had he done?
A small, cold, trembling hand snaps him from his spiralling thoughts.
You cup his wet cheek, arm extended towards him, mirroring the way his arms still bridge the distance between you.
“I won’t hurt you,” he promises—a little broken noise. It comes out of him like a plea for mercy.
Your lashes flutter as you blink a few times. Then you nod, retracting your hand back into your cocoon.
He’s hardly breathing as he begins moving again, careful not to touch your skin. You let him arrange the hat carefully on your head, staying still as he delicately moves your hair out of your face in his final touches.
Then he steps back, admiring his work.
His satisfaction is short-lived.
Your feet are bare.
Slowly, he lowers himself to one knee, crumpling the large envelope that now sports a large boot mark on it’s cover. He looks up at you. “Will you let me carry you to the car?” he asks, again, sounding much like a man begging for mercy.
You take a small step backwards.
He goes stiff.
He stops himself reaching out.
“I won’t hurt you,” he says, repeating his pledge. “And I won’t ever touch you if you don’t want me to. It’s just very cold—probably colder than it was when I came in—and you don’t have shoes.” He watches you look down at your feet, like you hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring any,” Rafayel adds, finding himself unable to stop speaking, desperately seeking the right words. “This wasn’t… the plan. I wasn’t ready for you.”
You shuffle towards him.
It’s a tiny little movement, hardly closing any distance between you at all.
He holds his breath.
Watches your face.
Your chin dips.
He’s almost afraid to rise to his feet. But then you take another small step closer, and suddenly, he desperately wants to be out of this place. He wants to take you home, where it’s safe and warm and he can finally process what was happening—how his life had just changed forever.
He snatches the crumpled envelope from the floor, bends it in half, and shoves it in one of his back pockets. Then, just before he can take a cautious step towards you, the hand that had rested on his cheek so gently, slips out to tuck a little stray clump of hair behind your ear. He can feel your touch on his cheek still, lingering, and he suddenly finds himself desperate for the chilled night air on his face.
With calm movements, careful not to spook you, he scoops you up: a delicate bundle wrapped in soft wool.
You tuck you chin into your chest and curl in on yourself, and he makes sure he’s got a secure hold on you, aware you aren’t holding onto him at all. It was all on him, and idea of you relying on him so fully, even in his little way, triggers another little marble of warmth to roll into that deep dark pit inside him.
Then he catches the scent of you, stronger than ever before. There’s something else in it now. Something new. It’s not all bitterness, like it had been up until now. He can’t decide what it is exactly. One day, he’d know your feelings like he knew his own. For now, all he knows is that little tinge of something new is… sweet. And sweet had to be good.
So he presses you to his chest, up against where those two little warm marbles roll around inside him, turns to shove the heavy door open with his back, and marches out into the clear winter night.
