Chapter Text
Ben
“...mom,” he began the moment they were alone inside of the cabin. She didn’t give him the chance to finish his plea for forgiveness before she was on her toes pulling him down into a tight, desperate hug.
“My boy,” she said, and he could hear the choked quality of her voice, words heavy with tears. “ My son .”
“ Mom ,” he croaked, a stone settling in his throat, tears stinging in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she sniffed, pulling back far enough to meet the ebony pools of his tearful eyes. “I’m so sorry for how you’ve suffered. I failed you. As a mother, I failed.”
“No,” Ben countered weakly, voice quavering. “No, it wasn’t you. I lost control. I was weak and Snoke saw that. I hurt people, I hurt Dad, and he saw how afraid I was.”
Leia shook her head, “No, Ben. You were just a child. And we had already placed such responsibility on your shoulders. We never asked what you wanted for yourself. And when Snoke began to groom you we turned a blind eye to your suffering.”
He began to sob then, and his mother held him tightly through it. He had only been a child, frightened, confused, with the weight of the world on his tiny shoulders. And Snoke had promised to take it all away, coming in the night when Ben was most alone. Coming through the darkness which enveloped his childish form each evening. The scars on his back stung with the memories of his torture and abuse. The beast was beaten from his very bones.
When his tears had run dry and his cheeks were sticky with salty tracks he pulled away, sniffing, giving his mother a weak, sad smile.
She smiled back, reaching up to cup his cheek, “Oh how you’ve grown.”
Ben swallowed thickly, another volley of tears threatening in his eyes. Smiling, eyes twinkling with joy, Leia gave one of his large ears a tug, “Though I suppose some things never change.”
Laughing weakly, Ben swallowed back his tears and let go of his mother, allowing her to stand on the flats of her feet once more.
“How’s dad?” he asked tentatively. He’d always had a strained relationship with Han.
“He’s… Han. If you know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” Han had never been one for entertaining the supernatural or enduring pack politics, making his choice of life partners a questionable one to say the least. But he was still Ben’s father, and in spite of everything the younger Solo still held a begrudging respect for the elder. Perhaps he even missed him.
Leia patted his cheek, “We don’t have time now, but once all of this hunter business is resolved I want you to come home and see him. And we need to hold a proper funeral for your Uncle Luke.”
Ben winced at the mention of Luke, “I’m… I’m sorry.”
Leia gave a mournful sigh, “It couldn’t be helped. Even Luke seemed to know that. It was Rey’s time to rise, besides. Rey’s and yours , it would seem?”
Her eyes shone with a knowing, playful glint.
Sheepishly, he rubbed the back of his head, too-small clothes pulling awkwardly around his shoulder, “Yeah, I guess.”
“No guessing about it,” Leia chastised lightly. “Rey has designated you as her mate to the rest of us, and as her equal . Oh my, my little boy really is all grown up.”
Ben flushed to his ears. Leia knew what it meant to be mates . She understood and accepted the physical side of his relationship with Rey.
“Do you love her, though?” Leia asked blatantly.
Ben glanced over his shoulder, peering out the crack in the door to see if Rey was within earshot. He hadn’t said the words to her yet, and he didn’t want this to be how she discovered the truth of his feelings.
Still flushed, he nodded, “Yeah. I do. She’s… I can’t explain it. I can’t put it into words.”
“Yes, that’s what a mating bond is like, but do you feel for her in a human way? Wolf self aside, do you want to be with her?”
“God yes,” he answered without a moment of pondering. “She’s all I can fucking think about, it almost infuriating.”
Then he pursed his mouth, feeling as though he had shared too much in a rush of emotion.
Leia was grinning ear to ear, “Good. I’m happy for you. You deserve some peace after everything you’ve endured.”
“Thanks, mom,” he smiled again, small but hopeful. Mom , it felt so good to speak that word again, so natural.
Leia took his large hand in her small one, skin velvet soft against his callouses, “Come. We’ll have more time to catch up once this mess is over with. Rey probably needs your help to prepare the others for what’s to come.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed.
When they stepped out into the cool, misty air they found the whole pack was surrounding Rose. Finn and Rey were at her side as she huffed painfully, dark eyes searching the ground for some relief and finding nothing but leaf litter and pine needles.
“Is it time?” Leia asked, passing between Poe and Jannah to kneel in the dirt beside the ailing wolf.
“I’m not sure if they’re real or not,” Finn said, his gaze was heavy with worry as he gently caressed behind his lover’s wolven ears. They twitched about wildly, as though she were anticipating some great danger to emerge from the surrounding forest.
“If they’re not, they will be soon,” Leia said, peering around Rose’s flanks and lifting her tail to assess the state of her dilation. The older woman made a soft, thoughtful sound, then rose back to her feet. “We need to move her to a safe place. We’ve left trails signs all over this area for the hunters to follow. It isn’t safe here, not for her and certainly not for babies.”
Rey made a low, dangerous sound in her chest, the decisive growl of an alpha about to issue a command, “Leia, take Rose as deep into the forest as she can manage. Find somewhere safe and dark that you can make warm for the pups.” She looked pointedly at Finn, her friend who she loved and valued deeply. Her tone was full of regret as she said; “Finn I need you here to help fight. I can’t be short a man when they’ll have as much fire power as they do. You saw what they did to Luke.”
Finn swallowed thickly and gave a tight nod, “I understand, alpha.”
“As do I,” Leia agreed.
Rose snorted her understanding, rising shakily to her feet. Leia placed a hand on her massive russet shoulder, guiding her forward. The whole pack watched as Rose lumbered along, breathing heavy with Leia beside her. They walked forward, west, crunching along through the leaves and pine needles without any consideration for stealth. The pack watched on as they ambled past the dilapidated cabin, the mists beginning to close up behind them like a cloudy maw, leaving only shadows to indicate their location as they mounted the small hill behind the cabin.
Finally, they vanished into the fog and forest. Swallowed whole by the guiding, guarding embrace of nature.
God go with them , Ben thought. Perhaps because his brainwashing hadn’t worn off yet. Or perhaps because part of him still believed in a good, noble, just hand which guided their delicate fates. What else could have spurred on within him such pure, unyielding love towards Rey?
Rey.
He wanted a moment alone with her before the fight. A moment to spell out his true feelings before they both looked death in the face and howled their refusal of submission.
The alpha was still staring off into the mist after Leia and Rose when Ben approached her and took her hand in his. Her skin was soft and warm, and her touch was like electricity across his knuckles.
Rey gulped hard, and he could see the fear in her eyes for only a moment before it was replaced with stony resolve. She snapped her fingers and signaled for her remaining wolves to circle up with her.
“My plan is simple,” she said. “We hold our position around the cabin. There are guns back at the den, Jannah, Poe, I want the two of you to sneak out that way and retrieve them. The rest of us will hold up here. When the time comes I want Ben, Poe, and Finn on the ground in the cabin with the firearms. Jannah, Kaydel and I will take up positions in the trees and try to get the jump on them.”
“How will we know when it's time?” Finn asked.
“You’ll smell them coming,” Ben answered for Rey. “They anoint themselves with this oil. I’m not sure what's in it, but it reeks.”
“Oil…” Rey murmured thoughtfully. But Poe snapped her out of it with another question.
“What if Jannah and I don’t make it back in time? They’ll be watching the den, you know.”
“We’re counting on them waiting for their leader,” Rey admitted. “It’s a risk, but one we’ll have to take. Take your time sneaking in. You know the combination for the padlock on the storm cellar, right? That's where Luke always kept his hunting rifles.”
“Why would a werewolf need hunting rifles?” Ben asked.
Rey shrugged, “Hunting is a common pass time around here, and Luke had friends outside of the pack he would go out with sometimes. But now we’ll use them to defend ourselves and our pack.”
“I know the combo,” Jannah confirmed.
“Good,” Rey nodded tersely. “Now go.”
It was a command that she issued, and neither Jannah nor Poe could resist the will of their alpha female. Rey watched as their bodies shifted into their wolf skins and they vanished into the surrounding forest. Rey worked her jaw, the only outward sign of her unease with the whole of their situation.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “They’ll get the guns.”
“I know they will,” Rey replied. “I know. They have to.”
Ben took her hand in his once more, lacing their fingers together. Rey gave his palm a squeeze, seeking his reassurance.
“Come with me,” he said, and she allowed him to lead her around the back of the cabin, into the forest and away from Kaydel and Finn who watched them vanish with knowing expressions written across their faces.
He wasn’t quite sure where he was taking her, his mate, his love. But eventually they came to a small clearing in the tree cover. A meadow of sorts, garnished with high, soft grasses that tickled their fingertips as they walked through, foraging their own paths. On the far side a deer froze, staring at them with its wide doe eyes for a moment before bounding off.
Ben could feel the tension in Rey’s body at the sight and smell of it. He could smell it, too. The blood coursing through the animal’s jugular, hot, red, and rusty. But now wasn’t the time to hunt, and he positioned himself in front of her to grab her attention away from the potential quarry.
“Rey,” he said, and he raised a hand to cup the side of her face, thumb brushing delicately over her lower lip.
“Ben?” She cocked a brow and angled her body forward slightly, giving an uneasy half smile. “We don’t have much time, maybe this can wait until—
“It can’t wait,” Ben insisted, and he stepped forward into her body, asserting himself by tangling his large fingers into the damp strands of her chestnut hair. Rey growled in response, low and warning, but at the same time she also leaned into him, embracing his warmth and proximity. She placed her palms firmly on his pecs, and he wasn’t sure if she meant to push him away or twist her fingers into his ill-fitting t-shirt and pull him even closer. His gaze hovered over hers, foreheads nearly touching, heady breaths mingling between them.
“What are we doing?” Rey exhaled, blinking as though she meant to retain some ounce of her humanity when her she-wolf was nothing but hungry.
Bumping their noses together, Ben couldn’t contain the growl that rose in his chest. It was possessive and carnal in a way that sent a palpable shiver up Rey's spine.
“Ben?” Her hands caressed over his chest up and onto his shoulders. She stood up on her toes and tried to kiss him, but he pulled back slightly so her lips only met with his chin. Dropping back down onto the flats of her feet she gazed up at him in honied confusion.
“ Rey ,” he whispered her name like the prayers he had once directed towards his twisted sense of God. Only she was there in his arms. Tangible. Real. Tentatively he let his lips brush over hers, and when he pulled away he pressed their foreheads together once more. He was trembling slightly. Perhaps with anxiety. Perhaps with anticipation.
Rey cocked her head, eyes questioning where her voice was silent.
“I love you,” he said, finally. And before she could answer him his lips were on hers, sealing, seeking, searching and finding everything he needed in the tenderness of her kiss.
Rey kissed him back, arms winding around his neck, fingers lacing through his ebon locks. They tumbled down and into the grass, grasping at one another desperately. Peeling away sweat damp clothing layer by layer until they were bare beneath the pale, insipid sunlight. Their tongues lanced and dragged, and Ben’s mouth moved from Rey's lips to her jaw, then to her neck where he sucked on her mating mark. The puckered scar was sweet beneath his tongue.
His hard cock dragged through her wetness once, twice, thrice, before she pushed him off of her and got onto her hands and knees, wriggling her rear at him playfully. Ben rumbled low and warning in his chest as he seized those salacious hips in his hands and pulled her back and into him. Into her. He sank in with a swift shift of his powerful hips, bottoming out with an unrestrained roar.
Rey, biting her lip as she grew accustomed to his stretch, dug her fingertips into the loamy earth like talons raking the ground. She was deliciously wet and achingly tight around him as he settled back on his haunches and began to cant his hips forward, hardly pulling out more than a few inches with each egress, and sinking it fast and sharp with each ingress.
Wet slapping sounds filled up the meadow, accompanied by their shared, mingling moans of pleasure.
“Ben,” Rey snarled his name, voice half animal. “ Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben. ”
His name upon her lips was the sweetest, most lurid song, that had his cock twitching and his balls tightening to his body. He could feel his knot beginning to swell at his base, more used to the sensation now.
“ Mine ,” Ben growled in answer. “My Rey. My woman. My mate.”
Rey nodded, grinding back and onto him and intentionally squeezing her internal muscles in a way that had Ben panting. She gave herself over to him entirely then, allowing her body to loosen and his thrusts to deepen. For a moment he was the alpha and she was simply at his mercy.
“Yours,” she promised him. Insides beginning to tighten up in preparation for her climax. She pressed her forehead to the cool ground, biting her lip hard as she slammed a fist into the earth. “Fuck, Ben. ”
Supporting most of her weight with the flexing muscles of his arms he held her hips up, clapping his own against them in a series of jackknifing, desperate thrusts as his knot began to catch on each roll of his hips.
Rey backed into him harder, pussy clenching even as she began to spread open around him, swallowing him up as he finally seated and the knot caught. At that moment the both of them came with gasping howls on their breaths, needy and wanton, desperate for one another in the privacy of the misty wood.
Ben felt himself pulsing as he spilled into her tight wet heat. He continued to rut for a few moments despite not being able to thrust, then he settled and let the orgasm take him away. Rey kept pounding the ground with her fists as her body worked through the aftershocks of her own climax, shivering and shuddering as Ben pulled her down and into the grass with him, spooning his massive body to her small one.
“I love you,” he said again, breathlessly against the shell of her ear. “ I love you .”
Rey struggled for a moment on his knot, as though she meant to turn and face him. It only served to milk another rope of cum from his sensitive flesh, earning her a soft, tired moan.
“I wanna look at you when I say it,” Rey complained.
“Say what?”
“That I lo— hey ,” she caught onto his playful little ploy. “Ass.”
Twisting her body, she looked over her shoulder at him and flashed him her teeth. In response he ducked his head forward and took her mating mark between his lips once more, massaging the silvery scars with his tongue.
Rey moaned, groping helplessly at the grass. And they stayed that way until the knot slipped free in a rush of commingled cum, leaving them both deeply satisfied despite the battle that loomed before them.
As soon as the knot came loose Rey twisted sharply, angling her body of Ben’s and pinning him to the ground. She kissed him hotly, then pressed their foreheads together in a show of tenderness, “I love you, too.”
Ben smiled.
They stood up, Ben helping Rey up and noticing the cum that dripped down her inner thigh. The sight of it excited him, some, but his cock was too spent to get hard again so soon.
Standing, they held one another for a while longer, kissing lightly, savoring what could very well be their final moments together.
“When this is over, would you marry me?” Ben asked.
“We’re already mated,” Rey nuzzled into his jawline. “That’s deeper than human marriage.”
“I’ve lived most of my life as a human,” Ben explained his point of view patiently, bumping his nose against her temple, kissing her hair.
“Ah, well then we can get married.”
He smiled, lips parting to thank her when a loud sound shattered the serenity of the forest. Birds scattered from the treetops, taking flighty wing. Not far off, their wolf ears tuned into the sound. It was near the cabin. Near what remained of their pack. A gunshot.
Rey stiffened against him, then stepped out of the safety of his arms.
Part of him wanted to take her and run, to disappear into the open arms of the forest and never return to the realms of man. But he was an alpha, too. He had a responsibility to his pack. And he had yet to prove himself.
“Let’s go,” Rey said, leaping into the air and taking on her wolf shape. She was already vanishing into the brush as Kylo followed suit.
No matter what came next, he knew that she loved him.
And he loved her.
That was all that mattered, in the end.