Chapter 2 #2
I’m so lucky this awful, trapped-in-the-middle-of-nowhere business is happening to me now, and not fifty years ago.
Fifty years ago, it would have been unthinkable for an omega to be stranded somewhere with an unmated alpha.
It would have been an absolutely life-altering, reputation-ruining disaster.
If we were even slightly compatible, the proximity alone would have brought on a heat.
God. What a nightmare.
I’m lucky I live in a time like this. I need to remember to be grateful for it. Maybe gratitude is something I should work on in my own time, instead of going on a ghastly retreat. #grateful and #blessed, and all that. Might make that my new mantra.
Yes.
I’m so #grateful for Suppressetine. Blessed to have it in my life.
Thank God for Suppressetine and miracle drugs like it, that have freed omegas from the constraints of our biology.
Near-perfect drugs with negligible side effects.
They really have changed our lives in so many ways.
The Old Ways have fallen by the wayside, replaced by a new and improved way of life.
Slut-shaming omegas and seeing us as nothing more than sex objects is a thing of the past. My generation is the most educated generation of omegas in history.
We’ve always been highly intelligent, and we’re finally able to show it.
We’re killing it academically, and not only that, we’re making the workplace our bitch too.
Finally, we’ve reached a time in history where we’re seen as men or women first, and omegas second.
I’ve been on Suppressetine since I turned twenty, and I fully intend to stay on it until I die.
Heats? Who needs them? Not me, that’s who. The last thing I need in my life is to fall prey to my biology every ten months.
Losing my mind to my hormones for days at a time? No, thank you.
Going on sexual rampages that require an alpha to fuck me silly in order to survive? Not for me, thanks.
No, I like my life the way it is. I love my career—I’m kind of a big deal in marketing, if I haven’t mentioned it before—and I love that I’ve never had to take a single day off because of my designation.
I really, really love that, thanks to Suppressetine, I can’t even remember when my last heat was—they’re so mild I barely feel them. Sex? I can take it or leave it. If I do feel a twinge, I simply have sex with an omega or beta friend.
It’s wonderful.
There are no downsides whatsoever. I mean, sure, Suppressetine has to be taken daily, but that’s a small price to pay. It’s a very forgiving medication. I forget to take it now and again, and it makes no difference at all.
Hmm. Come to think of it, I might have forgotten to take it last night, thanks to the last-minute rush to pack.
No matter. I’ll just pick up where I left off tonight.
“Dinner’s ready,” says Branson, startling me into an upright position.
It’s a strange meal. A tasty butter chicken with rice and steamed veggies.
The curry pairs incredibly well with the whiskey, and that’s something I didn’t know about butter chicken.
Or whiskey. The taste isn’t the strange thing.
The strange thing is that even though I eat fast, chewing and swallowing as quickly as I can, the meal drags on for hours.
Hours and hours.
Branson set the table, so when the food was ready, the implication was clear: I was to dine at the table.
It’s not that I mind sitting at a table when I eat.
Of course not. It’s just quite an awkward experience sitting at a massive twelve-seater table when the overhead lighting is dim and there are only two of you in attendance.
It’s giving Beauty and the Beast, and not in a good way.
The problem is, I haven’t spent all that much time with Branson in the past. At least, not alone.
And I definitely haven’t been this close to him for any length of time.
Up close, he’s very…there. Very noticeable.
When Paul met him for the first time, he didn’t realize he was Jensen’s brother, and he cupped his hand to my ear and said, “Holy shit. Look at that man. Damn if he isn’t straight out of an omega’s wet dream. ”
It irritated me at the time, and I’m not sure why I’m thinking of it now.
Oh yes. Because Branson is so…here. So everywhere. So big and so covered in hair. It’s dark-blond, his hair. Tousled and wild. That’s the hair on his head and his face. Obviously, I can’t speak for any other hair he might have, nor would I want to.
“I totally don’t mind about the TV,” I hear myself say. Interesting because I wasn’t aware I was still thinking about it. “I’m actually glad you don’t have one. I’m going to completely unplug while I’m here. Decompress, you know. Just be.”
“Mm,” he says mildly. “You’ll have to. We’ll lose power and signal tonight or tomorrow.”
What the hell?
“We’ll lose power and signal?” I cry, each word climbing an octave higher than the last.
“Yeah,” he says without the slightest hint that he understands the gravity of the situation. “I have a generator, so we’ll be able to limp along in terms of heating and lights, but when the signal goes down, there’s nothing we can do about it except wait for it to come back up.”
I chew the last mouthful of my curry at length, washing it down with a big glug of whiskey when I can’t seem to get it down any other way.
“How long does everything usually go down for?” I ask, though I have an awful feeling I know what Branson is going to say.
“Mm, ’bout a week.”
My laugh is high-pitched and tinny. A dreadful, disturbed thing that bounces off the table and ceiling. It sounds nothing like my normal laugh, and everything like the laugh of a man who has a panic attack careening straight for him.
I hate it, and I want to stop doing it right away.
Sadly, I don’t seem to be able to.
I laugh and laugh, unraveling more and more with every second that passes.
“Lucien.” Branson’s voice is quiet, yet it slices through me, cutting my laughter into pieces that splinter and fall mercifully silent. He looks at me, golden-brown eyes drilling holes to the back of my skull. “Am I making you nervous?”
“What? No! God, no. Not at all. I’m not nervous. I’m completely, um, comfortable. So comfortable, so…”
“You’re safe with me.” He cuts me off, holding my gaze and rendering me utterly mute. His expression is calm and notably unthreatening, so alpha that it dislocates something important in my brain. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you.”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
He knows I’m uncomfortable. He knows I’m unnerved by him.
How awful.
I can’t let that stand, so I down my whiskey and pour myself another without waiting for Branson to offer to do it for me. Then, I set about making conversation in earnest.
I cover topics ranging from local weather to global warming.
I touch on spirituality again, but thankfully, as it’s not really my wheelhouse, I move on before doing too much damage.
I discuss world news—a brief bulletin, focusing mainly on Europe, for some reason.
From there, I dabble in a bit of history, a bit of politics, and when I lose my train of thought, I rattle off detailed descriptions of memes I’ve enjoyed recently.
When my reservoir of random facts and general knowledge runs dry, I treat Branson to a blow-by-blow account of the lives of each of my friends.
I’m not a fan of discrimination, now or ever, so I tell him everything there is to know about my entire friend group, regardless of whether he’s met them or not.
I use words and phrases like “unpack” and “touch base,” and I manage to weave “synergy” into the conversation four separate times, though I don’t recall having much use for the word before tonight.
For his part, Branson looks concerned. There’s a thin ring of white clearly visible all the way around his pupils, and the more I talk, the wider it gets.
“And as for dear old Odysseus,” I hear myself say.
“What a fucking nightmare that man had getting home.” Some of what I’ve talked about has been so arbitrary that even I’m not sure how I landed on it.
At least when it comes to Odysseus, I know.
I did a semester of Classical Civilization in my second year at university, and though it was only a filler, an easy credit, I seem to have retained quite a bit of information about Homer’s epic poem.
“Lotus eaters, cannibals, Circe, Sirens…you name it, that poor bastard ran into it and then some… Speaking of names, I’ve always loved the name Skyler, but Scylla, the nine-headed man-eating monster in The Odyssey, really put me off it.
I just can’t quite unsee it, you know? It’s like when you hear a name and have met a kid that was a little shit with the same name.
It ruins it for you. That’s what’s happened with Skyler for me.
I hear the name, see the monster. I can’t get over it either. I’ve tried.”
The thin ring of white around Branson’s pupils has stretched worryingly wide. Perhaps he’s not a fan of the classics. No matter. I’ll move on.
“Suppressetine,” I say, slapping my knee.
“Now, there’s an interesting topic.” It’s occurred to me that I’ve been talking at Branson for a while now, rather than to him, and that’s rude of me.
I should be asking him questions and letting him answer.
I’ve always had a plethora of questions I’ve wanted to ask alphas about their views on suppressants, but I’ve never had the opportunity to do so.
Well, guess what? I’m stranded in the middle of goddamn nowhere with the biggest, most rugged alpha I’ve ever met right now.
What better time to do it than now? “Thoughts?” I gesture magnanimously to give him the floor.
His eyes narrow and he tilts his head to the side. “What about them?”