Chapter 33
L evy had been surprised by how quickly he’d picked it up, he remembered. And then he’d seemed quite surprised again when Kallen had successfully used it during heat with the other alphas, too. To think Kallen had been a little offended by that...
[Random question,] he sent, this time to Levy. [Does Leila use lure?]
His friend must have been on his phone already, because the answer pinged back at once. [She can . She used it to make me do chores when I was little CRYING EMOJI]
[Jk] he felt the need to clarify a moment later.
[So she could really control you with it?] Kallen typed, cursing how small his phone screen was. He should get a bigger one fit for the size of his hands.
[Yeah, but I was like 9. And my mum grounded her for a week when she found out.]
[You been practising?]
Kallen’s heart jumped in his chest. He hadn’t been practising exactly, unless one took it in the sense of doing it. He didn’t need to practise, unless he could learn to direct it better so innocent bystanders didn’t get pulled in?
His thumb rubbed absently at the side of the phone as he thought it through.
[I tried it on an omega.]
That wasn’t too revealing, and it wasn’t like Levy could do anything with that information but give it to another omega, right? Not that Levy would have used it to harm anyone, he’d never even used his own alpha will except when Kallen had gone into shock. Maybe that didn’t make it right, by some standards, but Kallen was grateful for it and who else was there to judge?
[Oh cool, did it work?]
[Yeah.]
He took a moment, unsure, then exhaled and told him the rest.
[It worked on a kid who was there too.]
When no response came, he reached for his glass of water and chugged half of it down, to the loud protests of his uneasy stomach. It took all his willpower to place the glass back on the coaster and inhale slowly, then let the air out like it was the last he’d ever have.
[What did you get them to do?] Levy had asked when he allowed himself to glance at his phone again.
[Stand up.]
[Well, like, I offered to give them a hug. Mentally.]
No, not mentally, he thought as soon as he sent it, psychically. He jumped when the phone vibrated with a call.
“Hey,” he managed, voice raspy. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. Not just to Levy but in general. He’d fucked up and admitting to it was the only way he could think to make it somewhat better. To make sure he didn’t do it again. But text had been enough punishment, he didn’t want to hear Levy’s disappointment, or worse, his fear.
Kallen had spent his life at the mercy of alphas, and now it seemed like unlike most omegas he had the capacity to hit them right back, possibly harder than they could bear.
And unlike a direct order, they might not even be able to tell he was doing it. He might not be able to tell he was doing it. It was easy to feel it was right when doing it felt so good, leaving him calm and centred.
But it probably didn’t feel bad to alphas to use will.
Not in the moment.
When he’d considered it at all, he’d assumed alphas refrained from using their ability to influence for omegas’ sake, but suddenly he wondered if it was the opposite. He’d hardly done anything with this new power of his and he was already terrified of the sheer amount of guilt it could accrue.
“Hey,” Levy said, his honeyed voice curling around Kallen like a blanket.
Today it just made him stiffen, though. He wasn’t sure he deserved the comfort.
“Thought this was too interesting for texting,” Levy added. “So, when you use lure you offer the person something?”
Kallen frowned, trying to remember how he’d done it. “Not at first, with you, I just—” His teeth clicked as he bit back the rest of the sentence. He’d wanted Levy so badly and he’d simply understood that wasn’t attractive, that to attract he had to stop reaching and open up instead. “At first, I thought what would be appealing and I don’t know, I thought of myself as an oasis. I really connected to that, and I got all calm and kinda left it there.” He shrugged, even though obviously Levy couldn’t see it. “And it worked.”
He bit his lip, but this time Levy’s answer didn’t take long. “An oasis.” He sounded thoughtful, not shocked, at least. “But you said you offered them a hug, right? Not just the oasis?”
“Well... it’s kinda the same thing, isn’t it? An oasis is a place where you are safe, where you get what you need.” His throat clicked so loudly he was sure Levy must have been able to hear it. “I guess that’s what I was saying, really. Come here and you can get what you need. But in the case of an omega, a hug made sense.”
While with an alpha sex did.
He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure leaving it unspoken wasn’t somehow worse. Levy had to know very well what he’d been offering since he’d got it .
And then suddenly he remembered the way he’d used it to make Benny feel safe after that mess with his brothers. Maybe what the oasis offered wasn’t so much about alphas or omegas, but about needs .
“Guess you were right,” Levy said slowly. “ Very much so , if someone else got affected. So, are you hanging out with old friends, is that who these omegas are?”
“Have I told you about Analisa?” he found himself asking in response.
It wasn’t a lie.
“No, who’s that?”
Kallen went with it, despite the discomfort. “Childhood friend, we used to play together. She was really into baseball. Like proper obsessed. I’m shocked she’s not a pro!”
Levy laughed a little. “Not everyone’s crazy like us, you know.”
“Well, you should have seen Analisa and me arguing about what sport our group of friends would play!”
Telling Levy about their childhood shenanigans had helped soothe his guilt over the deflection, and then his friend asked, “So she is an alpha?”
Kallen closed his mouth, he’d been about to add something, but he’d forgotten what at the question. It wasn’t like people didn’t ask these things, but he couldn’t help but feel how not casual it was. “No,” he said after another beat of uncomfortable silence.
He didn’t mind Levy knowing, but it was hard to know how to feel about Levy caring . Maybe he’d been right all along and it wasn’t the best idea to try to be friends when they’d been halfway to somewhere else together.
“Oh, okay,” Levy said. He sounded openly relieved.
“Um, so how many days a week are you volunteering?” he asked, desperate to get them out of the spot.
HE DID HIS BEST TO put their awkward exchange out of his mind. Levy was all the way in Jiro and even if he was a little jealous, it wouldn’t come to anything.
Besides, Kallen had more immediate problems, such as Taylor wanting to meet up with him to discuss what had happened.
Kallen had agreed to drive down to the community centre where the meetings happened one hour early. Analisa had agreed to come with and wait in a café across the street with her laptop since she had work to do for school.
“Hello, Kallen.” Taylor had answered the bell a little too promptly for his taste, though maybe it was better if he didn’t have any more time to overthink it.
“Hello.”
“Come on in.” He tried to surreptitiously inhale and hold his breath while he followed the other omega to what turned out to be an office—a technique for pre-game nerves from a childhood coach.
“Welcome to my day job,” Taylor said, taking the chair behind a post-it covered desk and gesturing to the other one.
Kallen sat, gaze falling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have... I don’t know what I’m doing, with lure. It was stupid to offer to do it.”
“Pretty sure it wasn’t the best idea to ask you to do it, either,” Taylor suggested in a thoughtful tone. “But what’s done is done, isn’t it?”
Kallen looked up, the other omega was smiling gently, the softness more in his honey brown eyes than on his mouth. “I guess.”
“I’m not gonna try and argue you out of feeling guilty, because God knows I have made a full-time pastime of it, but let me at least point out that I’ve got, what,” he squinted. “Twenty years on you?” Kallen confirmed with a nod. “And I have been running the group for over a decade, and I still made the wrong call. If anything, I owe you an apology for asking you to do something so rash.”
They were all good points, as things went, but Kallen shook his head. “I just really wanted everyone to know about lure. For me it was... Well, it doesn’t solve everything, but at least it’s kept me safe a couple of times.”
And other times it hadn’t, but it could have. It was painful to think of this power he apparently had now, because it meant he also had to think about he hadn’t used it when he’d been truly in danger. Maybe McKinley wouldn’t have been affected, or would have got even angrier, but to know that he hadn’t even tried weighed on him. Before he’d seen himself as a victim of circumstance, but more and more he was being forced to acknowledge he’d chosen to put himself in a fucked-up situation by accepting the job. And now it seemed like he could have done something about McKinley’s attacks too.
But he wasn’t going to let regret make him lose track of the fact that he could keep himself safe now. At the very least, he needed to improve his control to the best of his ability. Both for his own sake and for others’. Kami had seemed fine afterwards, and Kallen hadn’t felt like he could demand to know more details from the kid, but he still wondered...
“It’s a pretty useful skill,” Taylor told him. “How long have you been working on it?”
“Um, not that long. I have done it like, five times?” That was counting the time with the receptionist, which he wasn’t sure counted. But rounding it up did not harm. Of course he respected innate talent, he’d been born with his own share or he couldn’t have made it as far as he had professionally. But what was supposed to really count was grit and hard work. “That’s why I can’t control it,” he added.
When he risked a glance, Taylor’s eyes were wide. “Okay, didn’t see that one coming,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “So you are a unicorn.”
“What?” Kallen asked.
“You are an exception, not the rule,” Taylor rephrased. “I remember you said you could do it from the first time you tried it, which is most definitely not the case for any omegas I know of. And apparently you have reached this point without much practice either.”
He swallowed; eyes stuck on a tiny stuffed penguin on the corner of the desk. “I guess.”
“It didn’t feel bad, you know,” Taylor offered and Kallen looked up, searching his face for the lie. “It was... warm, I’d say. Like a hug. No, like a hug you’d really been looking forward from a friend you haven’t seen in ages but who you love very much.”
“Oh.” He was surprised Taylor had picked up on the idea of the hug, Levy certainly had had no idea about the image of the oasis.
Still, it didn’t sound anything like alpha will, which was either a painful yank or a sustained pressure you couldn’t stop from moving you. Was that its very nature or just how alphas used it? Once when he’d twisted his ankle as a child, his father had ordered him not to be in pain and it’d worked, but only by making him completely numb. It’d taken days for the effect of the order to fade. Back then, not being in pain had seemed like a blessing, except for how of course pain had a purpose and forcing the body to do anything was never good.
“Do you I think I could... Like, alpha will doesn’t feel good. To me.” He was mostly speaking to his own knuckles on his lap by now.
“It can,” Taylor said, sounding awed, of all things. “It can make you feel brave, like someone cheering you from the stands, or yeah, it can quash you like a bug until you obey.”
Kallen glanced up at him. “Why would you need will to make someone feel good?”
The other omega shrugged. “Well, you don’t, but it helps. It’s a bit like a boost to the emotion. Say I tell you I’m proud of you, that’s pretty good. But an alpha who knows what they are doing can make you feel that pride.”
It all seemed like a nice fantasy to Kallen, but supposing he believed it, that wasn’t such good news. “So, lure could feel bad, too. I could use it to make someone...” He waved a hand around, not wanting to specify. It wasn’t like it mattered, making someone do anything was fucked up.
“You could,” Taylor agreed, reaching over and putting a glass before Kallen, then pouring from a clear carafe of water. It was a beautiful object, almost out of place in the mundanity of this office. “And I’m sure there have been omegas who have snapped and gone for it, but most omegas don’t even know how to use lure at all. And can you imagine if someone had been caught? That would have been all over the news.”
Unlike when an alpha used their will to force their partner or even a stranger into something they didn’t truly want. Like a pregnancy or a bond.
Because that was normal. Criminal if it could be proven, but nothing out of the ordinary.
“There was Cleopatra, apparently,” Kallen offered, because getting men to choose her over the country they had pledged their loyalty to seemed like it would count as a serious misuse of power.
Taylor hadn’t known and they’d talked a bit longer about what parameters one could use to keep lure use ethical.
It wasn’t a guarantee of anything, but it helped a little.
MASLOW CALLING HAD been inevitable, but this time, Kallen was prepared. He had actually printed out his test results for the occasion. “Oh, hello,” he said and then before Maslow could start on him added, “Please hold the line, I need to go get my results.”
He’d shoved them in a folder, intent on starting to keep records. He couldn’t have said what they meant, but the numbers were still data points he could use to ask another doctor later. And besides, getting to take a moment to breathe himself into the oasis was essential.
“I was surprised to learn of your miraculous recovery,” Maslow sounded pissy, and Kallen thought, good .
Kallen wasn’t angry, he was something much better; he was sure . “You were right,” he said. “It was all in my head, I guess when I got home, I just felt safe again.”
It wasn’t quite an open dig, and the doctor made a sound low in his throat and volleyed back. “I see. I suppose we better talk about your results, since you are so interested.”
But if he thought he was going to get Kallen angry with that, he was very much mistaken. He had been angry for a long time, and he’d told himself he was just imagining every reason the team gave him to doubt them. Now there was no doubt; they were his enemies. In a lot of ways, it made it easier to lightly say, “That would be great.”
If it was all just a game, he didn’t need to mean it or feel guilty for the disgust Maslow inspired in him, trying to bully him into not asking questions about his own body.
“So, your oestradiol levels are a little low, I’d like you to take some supplements for a couple of months.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “Let me find that one...”
By the time he’d asked about every single reproductive hormone Maslow had tested him for, he thought he’d made his point pretty comprehensively that he knew what the doctor was doing. Maslow actually had lost his cool and cut him off, telling him that he had to go and would be sending him the prescription.
Kallen put his phone down with a grin. He didn’t expect Maslow to be keen to call him for a check-in any time soon.
HE’D GONE BACK TO THE café where he’d left his friend in a daze.
“Wow,” Analisa told him when he flopped onto the chair by her side. “You look like shit. What happened?”
Kallen shook his head. “Nothing, just...”
“Okay, let me grab you a drink first.” She decided, standing up and heading for the counter.
She didn’t ask him what he wanted, and he didn’t care enough to chase her.
The cup clinked against the wooden table, making him blink back to the present. “Hot chocolate,” Analisa announced.
Kallen hesitated, fearing an ungodly amount of sugar, then brought it closer and took a cautious sip. It was a bit too hot still, but dark and creamy.
“Sugar free,” his friend told him then, eyebrow raised like she could see he’d doubted her.
“Thank you,” Kallen told her.
“Okay.” She retook her seat, starting to close her books and tidy up her pens. “So what gives? First you get all mysterious asking me if I can use lure, then you forget to answer me until you need a chaperone here.” She snapped her fingers, long ping nails moving dangerously fast. “Time to spill.”
He took another sip of his drink, buying himself time as well as a bit of energy. “Taylor wants me to try to teach other omegas how to use lure.”
“Um, what?” Analisa asked. “Teach them? Like, so you know how?”
“I... Yeah, I do. Or I guess I have a natural talent?” His hesitation irritated him at once. “No, I do. I could do it from the very first time. My... flatmate described it to me, and I just came up with a way to do it.”
Analisa, with instincts that would serve her well in court, latched onto precisely the wrong detail. “Your flatmate? Didn’t know you had a flatmate. Didn’t you make mad money? Why did you have to share?”
Kallen shrugged a little. “At first they put me with a family, an older teammate and his wife.” He very carefully did not look just in case her mind went to all the awkward places his own had done. “But Levy lived in the same building, and he had a two-bedroom flat, so I ended up... Well, he hurt his elbow, and I stayed with him for a while to help him out. And then...”
“You never moved out?” she guessed.
“Yeah.”
She made a low, thoughtful sound. “And this is Levy of the puppies, right?”
For a moment, Kallen had no idea what she was talking about. Then he remembered his friend had been fantasising about pets a few weeks back. He snorted. “Imaginary puppies. But sure, he’s sweet.”
“And he told you about lure?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he’d...” He scrubbed at his face. “I know it’s fucked up, the team dynamics, and I don’t want to—”
“Kallen,” she cut in. “You lived through it ; I can handle hearing it.”
Huffing, he turned his face to look out the window. He wasn’t sure he could handle telling her. When he’d lived through it, he’d felt like he had no choice. He’d had to push himself through to survive, but now... Now he just wished he could forget it all. Move on.
But of course, that would have meant moving on from Levy too. Walking away from even the chance of them.
It was such a small chance, impractical and absurd. He didn’t get why he couldn’t quite make himself give up on it.
Maybe this could be the test. If he could tell Analisa, and if she could see that Levy had done the best he could under the circumstances, then maybe... “He got assigned to my heat rota, but he told me he didn’t want to do it, that he’d pass.” He swallowed. “I asked... I asked him if he’d be there to help. Because the heat before that someone got rough with me.”
His friend let out a very unladylike growl.
“And he did it. He helped me. He didn’t...” He took a drink, then could barely get it down his throat. “He didn’t—” He had to scrunch his eyes shut to get the words out, “have sex with me.” He stopped, just breathing, and she didn’t say a word. “He...” Kallen started again, then had to drink from the complimentary glass of water to be able to continue, “He stayed and he held me, and he looked after me.” He exhaled slowly, heart heavy with longing. Soon, he’d have another heat, and it wouldn’t be the terrifying lottery of which three alphas he’d get, but it wouldn’t have any of that sweetness he craved either.
Maybe that was what it was so difficult to give up on Levy. If they hadn’t met as teammates, he’d have been absolutely perfect for Kallen. For anyone, really. It wasn’t like Kallen didn’t know that he didn’t have a lot to offer a partner.
And Levy didn’t have to wait for Kallen to sort out the mess that was his life, he could meet a nice omega anywhere.
“Mmm... he sounds like a good guy,” Analisa allowed. She looked reluctantly impressed. “Okay, so he tells you about lure, and what, you just do it ? What did you do exactly?”
Oh, fuck, he thought when he realised he couldn’t tell the story without revealing way more than he’d intended. But she must have seen it on his face. “Oh, no, you didn’t .”
“He suggested it!” he argued. “He said to try to get his attention and then faced away from me. So I...” He shrugged a shoulder, feeling oddly shy. It’d all been as consensual as possible and by that point, he and Levy had been aware the other was interested. “I did. I got his attention.”
“Bet that’s not all you got,” Analisa said, shooting and scoring.
Kallen thought about retelling it in detail, the way Levy had paused over him, openly snared but still resisting in case Kallen didn’t mean it like that. Or how good it’d felt to finally give into the desire that had been pulling between them for months.
But that wasn’t for her. Whatever happened with Levy in the future, that moment was theirs and theirs alone.
He straightened and smirked at her. “That’s for me to know and you to wonder.”
She gave an indignant squawk that soon turned into a laugh loud enough to get other patrons looking their way.
HE DIDN’T GET A CHANCE to tell her any more about lure before it was time for them to head across the road for the meeting. Taylor had promised he wouldn’t bring any of it up again, and that if people did, he’d say he was trying to get an expert to come for a demonstration.
And he was, but it seemed that such people were extremely rare and the costs of getting them to Terali were not anywhere near the organisation’s budget. Hearing that, something twisting inside him. He’d set up some charitable donations when he’d started getting the ridiculous salary he received as an athlete, but he’d just done generic stuff. Now he wished he’d know about Fair Sport sooner. And of course, given he was planning to become unemployed soon, this was the worst possible time to think about helping that way.
The meetings didn’t often have a theme. This time they ended up listening to an omega man who’d been offered a contract he was terrified to accept. Kallen stayed silent, since all he could have possibly said was to warn him off it. Taylor was much better at asking guiding questions, and even hot-headed Suri managed to tone themselves down enough to offer helpful scenarios.
Oddly, it was Analisa who seemed to break the dilemma. “But is it enough for you to play in the league you play now?”
While professional teams had retained their ‘right’ to abusive contracts, the lower leagues had been forced to give up on them decades ago. Of course, they also either didn’t pay or paid less than any other full-time job.
Rohan paused, and Kallen looked away, imagining that it’d have felt like to have the attention of the whole room on him. “I... I guess it is. Enough. I just want more. And I— Well, I could use the money. My mum’s not doing so hot, she’s going to need care soon. It’d make all the difference, to know I can help her.”
“I get that,” Analisa told him, softer than Kallen had ever heard her. “That you want her to be safe. But... Well, she’d want that for you , right?”
Rohan inhaled sharply, lips pressed together and blinking fast enough he was obviously trying not to cry.
“Actually,” Taylor cut in. “If that’s why you are thinking of doing it, maybe there is another way. We can talk about it after the meeting, yeah?”