49. The Real Thing
Chapter forty-nine
The Real Thing
Cass
Granny Lu’s community center smelled like old wood and coffee, and the room she’d put them in had mismatched chairs, a long table, the particular staleness of a space that got used for every kind of conversation a small community needed to have.
She’d wheeled herself out saying “Orion asked to handle this and Lord knows I’ve explained it once, ain’t no way I have the patience for round two. ”
Cass and Riot sat on one side, Orion and Dante on the other, both of their chairs pressed back against the wall like they were worried the table might find a new location that involved going through them.
Dante was not sitting the way Cass expected a former corporate spy to sit.
He was slouched in his chair with one arm draped across the back of Orion’s, his legs stretched out, and he was looking at Cass and Riot with the easy, assessing attention of someone who was comfortable being exactly where he was and didn’t care who knew it.
His other hand rested on Orion’s thigh. Orion hadn’t removed it, but from the set of his jaw, he was thinking about it.
Cass leaned into Riot because his body was done pretending it could do anything else. Riot’s arm was around him, solid, and through the wire, Cass could feel anxiety humming under his skin, like fast little jolts of electricity to his major muscle groups.
“So,” Dante said, looking at Riot. “Congratulations. You belong to a princess now, I guess.”
“Dante,” Orion said with a sigh.
“I’m being welcoming.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“Both can be true.” Dante’s thumb moved on Orion’s thigh, but Orion shoved his hands away. Dante put it back on Orion’s thigh.
“There’s no such thing as a permanent bond,” Riot said, even as his arm tightened around Cass. “That’s corporate bullshit. Contracts. Algorithms. None of it’s permanent.”
“You sure about that?” Dante leaned forward, the lounging dropped and the intelligence underneath poking through—sharp, focused, the thing that must have made him much more intimidating in some life he had before living with Nulls.
“You haven’t been feeling things lately?
Things you know aren’t yours? Emotions that taste like someone else? ”
Riot didn’t answer.
“Do you mean like when Riot is mad and I feel like I want to hit something?” Cass asked, pressing a hand against his still-sore chest. “Because that’s very unusual for me…I’m not a hitting person.”
Orion shoved Dante’s hand off his thigh and leaned forward. “That’s exactly what he means. And he could have said it without being a—”
“I was being direct,” Dante said. “It’s a time-honored communication strategy.”
“You were being a dick. Again.” Orion turned to Cass, and his voice changed—still flat, still direct, but gentler.
The effort was visible, like a person used to speaking at full volume trying to remember that the person across from them startled at loud noises.
“Granny Lu has a journal from before the Adjustment—all the real science, not the corporate version. She explained this when it happened to us. But I asked to do it this time because...” He glanced at Dante, smiled a little, but when Dante grinned back at him, he immediately scowled and looked back at Cass.
“...because I went through the same thing you did. I went in blind, not knowing what was happening. It just happened.”
“That is very kind of you, Orion. Thank you.” Cass smiled.
He knew when he had approached Orion months ago, there was something good and kind about him, even if he did bear a striking behavioral similarity to a stray cat Cass had encountered in the Neutral Zone.
That cat had bitten and scratched him more times than he could count, but eventually Cass was kind enough to it it would sit near him sometimes.
“So, you and Dante are bonded, and you didn’t know what you did to bond?
Is there no bonding ceremony where you are from? ”
“I spent my whole life avoiding Alphas,” Orion said. “In SVI territory, bonding means being owned, that’s it. I never wanted any part of it. And then—” He gestured at Dante, who smiled like someone being complimented. “This asshole kidnapped me and a different bonding happened.”
“Against your will?” Cass frowned.
“Against my better judgment.” Orion’s mouth twitched. “My will came around eventually.”
The concept of not wanting to bond was strange. He’d wanted it his whole life—the sacred bond, the connection, the person who was supposed to be his. None of the Elysian methods worked for him, but wanting had been real. The wanting had always been real, even when everything around it felt off.
“Okay, so let me ask you some questions, and they might be personal, but it will confirm whether or not you completed the bond,” Orion said. “When did you first smell Riot?”
“In an alley. He smelled like strawberries and cream. And cordite.” Cass felt the heat rising in his face as he said the words, his voice soft. “I followed the smell without thinking.”
“So that is Stage 1 of the Primal Triad, it’s called the Scent-Sync. It happened to Dante and I the first time we met, and it pretty much made him a weirdo who was obsessed with me,” Orion explained.
Dante scoffed. “I was the only one obsessed? What about you—”
“Stage 2 involves blood,” Orion cut him off with a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Riot mentioned before that you were both injured when you met.”
“Yes, I helped him with his hands,” Cass said. “My arm was bleeding.”
“Then that’s when it started. You both essentially did Stage 1 and Stage 2 at the same time.”
Cass sat with that. It felt…right, actually.
Not frightening. The idea that their blood mixed and something began, real and biological and beyond any of Elysian’s algorithms. He wasn’t sure he believed in divine will or the guidance of the universe towards transcendence anymore, but knowing he had something real from a situation where a scared missionary bandaged a stranger’s hands…
that felt messier and cleaner at the same time.
“So you’re telling me,” Riot said, “that everything that has happened…the suppressants failing, the heat, the part where I almost lost my mind, multiple times, happened because I got into a fistfight in the Neutral Zone and ran into Cass right after?”
“That’s essentially what happened, yes,” Dante said.
“Your Stage 2 activation was triggered by a chance encounter with a compatible Omega, and your blood mixed outside your bodies. It’s a very inefficient system, if you think about it.
If Orion wasn’t constantly trying to kill me when we met, it never would have happened to us.
If Gensyn cared about the whole permanent bonding thing, they probably would have done it in a lab with significantly less bleeding. ”
“Horrifying. Thank you for that assessment.” Riot sighed.
“Happy to consult.”
“Stage 3,” Orion interjected, “has a stupid name, but it’s called the Soul-Bite. It’s not well known outside of places like this, because it changes how things work in the corporate territories. Omegas choose to bond, not the Alphas.”
If he means a real bite, then I have to explain…
“There’s a gland at the juncture of the neck and shoulder.
The Dominance Anchor.” Orion looked at his hands.
“The Omega’s saliva changes during peak heat and produces an enzyme.
The bond completes when the Omega bites that gland.
” He paused. “During, well, when you’re being intimate.
At the, uh, at the end. Both of you. At the same time. ”
The blush hit Cass like a wave. His ears, his neck, his face, the backs of his hands. Every part of him that could turn red turned red simultaneously.
“At—” His voice cracked. “Both—at the same—”
“Yeah.”
“Oh heavens….”
“I know.”
“So…when we did sex and I bit him— and it was right when we—” He covered his face.
The last time they had discussed the intimate things with Orion and Dante, Riot looked like he was about to burst into flames and Cass knew those things were private…
but also everyone in this room now knew what Cass and Riot had been doing when the bite happened.
“Don’t—you don’t have to explain,” Orion said. “Same thing happened to me. We were together and I bit him and I didn’t plan it. My body just found his neck and I—”
“Bit down like you were trying to take a chunk out of me,” Dante finished. He said it with the fond, slightly awed tone of someone describing a natural disaster they’d survived and would happily survive again. “Best moment of my life, for the record.”
“Nobody asked,” Orion said.
“I’m providing context.”
Cass lowered his hand enough to look at Orion through his fingers. “You didn’t know what you were doing either?”
“Not a clue. Just instinct. My mouth went to a spot on his neck and every cell in my body said bite and I did.” Orion’s jaw was tight, but his eyes were honest. “The Omega’s body knows. You can’t accidentally do it with someone you don’t want. It’s—it’s like a safety lock. The deepest one.”
Cass thought about the cellar. It wasn’t scary or wrong, it was the thing he’d been reaching for since he was sixteen and kneeling on a mat being told the algorithm would find him his match. Even with the discomfort of that night, everything about it felt right.
“The bond is permanent,” Orion said. “As far as we know. Once the bite completes it, there’s no undoing it.”
Cass looked at Riot and smiled. “Good.”
Riot’s jaw worked, his brow furrowed, but when he caught Cass looking at him, he smiled back.
Dante’s hand went to his own neck and pressed it, and his eyes went half-lidded with a sound that was quiet and private and probably should not have been made at a table with other people present.
“Jesus Christ,” Orion said, rolling his eyes. “Not here.”
“I was demonstrating a point.”
“You were getting off at a community table.”
“The bite mark stays sensitive,” Dante said to Riot, completely unembarrassed, his fingers still on the spot. “Permanently. It becomes a point of—let’s call it heightened receptivity.”
“Let’s call it what it is,” Orion said. “He gets hard when I touch it. Or when he touches it. Or when he thinks about me touching it. It’s like a button. A really inconvenient button in a really obvious location.”
Dante removed his hand from his neck like someone putting down a dessert they weren’t finished with. “It’s not a button.”
“It’s absolutely a button.”
Cass thought about the spot on Riot’s neck, what might happen if he touched it, and immediately felt a warmth pull at the wire. Riot’s hand found his knee under the table and pressed.
“Does the emotional stuff work both ways?” Cass asked, biting the inside of his lip as that warmth settled in his belly.
“The bleed-through,” Orion said. “Yeah. It goes both ways. And it gets stronger. You’ll be able to send things intentionally after a while. Calm. Comfort. Get the fuck away. Whatever you need him to feel.”
“I think I’ve already done that,” Cass said. “He was…having Berserker issues, and I was able to help him calm down.”
Orion and Dante exchanged a look. The kind of look that said that’s faster than we expected without either of them saying it.
“How does it work for you?” Orion asked. “With a Berserker.”
“He’s always gentle with me,” Cass said. Orion’s eyes drifted down to his neck and Cass added quickly, “Most of the time.”
Dante made a sound that might have been a laugh, but Orion elbowed him again before speaking. “I know all of this sounds crazy. I didn’t believe it either, but we can ask Granny Lu for the book and show you—”
“I don’t care about the reason,” Cass said quickly, the words coming out the way things came out when he found the simple thing underneath all the complicated things: not loudly, just clear.
“I don’t care about stages or enzymes or glands.
I know I love him and he loves me. That’s all that matters, right? ”
The room went quiet.
Orion was looking at him with his face doing a soft thing and Dante had gone still in a way that wasn’t performing, his hand back on Orion’s thigh, and this time Orion wasn’t removing it. “You really don’t care?”
“No.”
Riot turned his head fully and looked at Cass, his eyes wide and that crooked grin on his face that always made him look younger. “If you don’t care, then I don’t either.”
They talked a bit longer about how things might be difficult, managing emotions and sensation that bled through unintentionally, but Cass was only half listening.
He didn’t care about the science. He was just happy that his body, the thing he had felt was always so wrong, did something right.
When they walked out together into the cool night air of the Collective, Dante and Orion went one direction (Cass could hear them bickering before they’d gone ten steps), and Cass and Riot went the other way, holding hands and decidedly not bickering.