Chapter 26
“This is an improved formula,” Father said, stabbing the needle into the vial to fill it with an off-white fluid. “The burn will be minimal, and your heart will cease beating in under fifteen seconds.”
“Mother won’t be pleased,” Ares noted, resting back on the medical table, the thin white pants and t-shirt he was allowed to wear doing nothing to prevent the chill from licking against his skin.
Lab seventeen had specific temperatures it had to remain in at all costs to keep several drugs from expiring early.
Having spent all his life on Usurn, he was used to the cold, so it didn’t bother him to the same extremes that lab fourteen or lab twelve did.
“We’ve agreed to split the experimentation between you and Balthazar. Ideally, we’ll disprove her theory that pain is the deciding factor that pushes you into a different dimension.”
Father didn’t like that Mother always wanted to hurt them.
He was a hypocrite.
“Remember what you need to focus on this time?” Father asked as he brought the needle over, the tip hovering above Ares’ arm as he waited for a satisfactory response.
In the corner, Mindy, Father’s assistant, typed away on the keyboard in front of the large computer holo-screen, the clicks making Ares’ skin prickle as irritation set in.
He hated everything about these people. Their cavalier reactions in the face of what was no doubt breaking a dozen Intergalactic Conference Rights laws. Their obsession with the afterlife.
The stupid cherry-flavored gum Mindy was always chewing, as though this was a classroom at some second-rate university and not the prestigious Major Research Institute.
Like, if she was hellbent to take part in conducting near-death experiments on virtual children, she could at least act the part of a serious scientist for five seconds.
“You want me to try and return to the last location,” Ares dutifully said.
Yesterday, when they did this dance three times—the max amount of times you could safely kill and bring a person back, according to research—he’d entered a plane of existence where everything was a varying shade of the color blue.
He’d of course stood out like a sore thumb and had spent most of his time there being chased by the locals, beings with six arms and two heads.
“The goal is to see if that’s at all possible, or if reality shifts depending on the timeline our current branch is on. Perhaps different cracks appear at different intervals. If we can prove whether or not this is the case, we’ll be one step closer to devising a way to utilize these cracks.”
Father wanted an escape from his reality but was too much of a coward to go the route most people went when they were scared and depressed and hopeless. He wanted an easy out. A means to jump from one existence to another.
Basically, he wanted to be a god.
But he would never be a god, and even if he could be, it wouldn’t change anything for him.
Ares knew that better than anyone, because technically he was a god, and what good had that done him? If anything, it’d only made things worse. The second Mother had learned that past lives were potentially also branches that could be manipulated and accessed, she’d shifted her focus.
Bal had spent the last six months forced to relive a past neither of them had ever wanted to return to. Mother was convinced she’d proven Father’s theory in the process, since she could send her son to the same branch, but Father argued the past and the present weren’t the same.
Ares was forced to concur.
In the past, his mother was Light.
In the present, his only parent was Father, and he was worse than the God of Foreboding.
“Let’s begin. Mindy, start the clock on my say so.” Father inserted the needle into Ares’ arm and pushed the plunger.
There may have been minimal burn, as promised, but Ares had secretly stopped feeling the piercing of needles years ago.
Staring up at the harsh overhead white light, he counted down from ten and waited for the drug to begin taking effect.
His muscles locked up, and his chest seized.
He felt himself jolt against the restraints binding his arms, legs, and torso to the table, and then finally his vision blurred and went out entirely.
There was a massive pressure from all sides, a tearing sensation as his consciousness was ripped from his physical body, and then Ares was elsewhere.
He found himself lying in a field of blue poppies, a full moon glowing above him, joined by an unrecognizable constellation of stars. Long blades of grass tickled against his bare arms, and when he inhaled, a sweet scent filled his lungs, making him lightheaded.
Then something strange happened. He felt himself twitch between his thighs, his cock lengthening to full mast, bulge pressing against his pants. Ares only had enough time to lift his head and stare down at himself before his cock sprang free, rosy tip already leaking.
This…had never happened before.
Had it happened…at all?
Was this—
A moan tore from his throat when something tight slipped over him, gripping his cock like a vice. It traveled all the way down to the root, squeezed, and then made its way back up, until just the tip was burning from the warm, wet phantom sensation.
“Lucifer.” The name echoed across the sky, a groan or a plea, familiar but still… wrong.
Ares didn’t get hard in any of these realities.
When he’d visited the blue planet, he’d been in his sixteenth year, certainly of age for wet dreams and random influxes of hormones, however…
Sex had never been an interest. How could it be, when his life was whittled down to needles and tubes and electric shocks?
Not to mention the name being called wasn’t his own.
Only…
Wasn’t it?
“Lucifer,” the voice came again, closer to his ear this time, and Ares jolted to the side, trying to escape whatever it was. But the grip on his cock tightened for his efforts, encasing him entirely, as that voice continued to call to him.
Ares made a grab for whatever it was over him, frowning when his hands connected with something solid that his eyes couldn’t perceive.
“Lucifer,” the voice whined. “Harder. I can’t do it by myself. Wake up.”
Wake up?
Wake—
Ares snapped out of the dream so fast he got whiplash, blankly staring sightlessly up at the ceiling of his bedroom in Castle Black as the world rushed back in and resettled around him. He’d decided to take a nap between sketches and had fallen asleep.
Alone.
The man responsible for waking him was hard at work, riding his cock like their lives depended on it.
A naked Eden straddled him, one hand braced on the center of Ares’ chest, the other clinging to the headboard.
He used his knees to lift and lower himself in rapid succession, his dick and balls slapping wetly against Ares’ lower abdomen as he bounced on Ares’ swollen cock.
His eyes had been screwed shut, but the second he opened them and noticed Ares was awake, he let out another groan, one that Ares felt all the way to his toes.
“Finally.” Eden dropped forward, capturing Ares’ mouth with his own in a quick, yet bruising kiss before straightening once more so he could continue to ride him with the same vigor. “I’ve been trying to wake you for ages.”
Ares' heated gaze swept down Eden’s form, and he realized the Starling had only gone as far as to pull Ares’ pants down to his knees, leaving him otherwise clothed. He’d been hasty, overly eager to sit on him.
Why?
“What are you up to?” Ares asked, eyes rolling back in his head, when Eden slammed down on him, pushing him so deep they both momentarily saw stars.
“What?” Eden replied, tone somewhat bratty. “Thought this was my seat. Doesn’t that mean I can take it any time?”
Ares grabbed Eden’s waist and drove up into him. “What’s gotten into you?”
He glared.
“I mean, besides me,” Ares said. He honestly hadn’t predicted this.
He figured they still had some ways to go before the Starling willingly came onto him again.
Waking to them already fucking? That was a dream come true.
Certainly a reality he wouldn’t mind experiencing more of.
But to ignore the fact that it was a surprise and somewhat out of character would be doing a disservice to Eden. “Did something happen?”
“Oh, you mean like my discovering you and Balthazar aren’t related?”
Ares frowned. “I never said we were.”
“You definitely let me believe that, though. By the way, you said his name in your sleep.” Eden leaned down, hand sliding from Ares’ chest to wrap delicately around his throat. “You whispered all breathily, Bal.”
“It’s a childhood nickname from when we were kids. I don’t use it anymore.”
“You called him that at my house before too.”
“Don’t be mad.” Ares cupped Eden’s left ass cheek and repositioned his other palm over Eden’s thigh.
“You keep touching me there like you expect me to develop a trigger. What, you want me horny for you whenever you massage my thigh?”
It hadn’t been the best of his plans, but having it called out so bluntly sort of made Ares want to pout. That is, until he went to pull his hand away, and Eden growled at him.
“Don’t you dare.” Eden bounced on his cock a few times before continuing their conversation. “Tell me you love me again. You’ve said it before.”
“I love you.” He did. He didn’t see reason not to voice it if that’s what his Starling wanted.
Eden eyed him and when he didn’t add anything, demanded, “Aren’t you going to ask me to say it back?”
“You’ve never said it before.” He didn’t think he was ready. There was a chance he didn’t feel the same way yet. “I can wait.”
“Until reality splits and another love interest enters the scene?”