FENN DRAX #2
Marlow slowly moves closer to my bed.
"I’ve heard about you. I think everyone here has. You’re basically a legend around this place, and also the main subject of half the experiments they’re running. I’ve been curious about how they treat you, and after what I just saw, I think I have my answer."
There’s something about his concern that’s disarming. As he leans in, a long strand of auburn hair slips forward and brushes my forearm, giving me this completely ridiculous urge to grab it and rub my face against it, which is obviously impossible with my hands chained like this.
Well, yeah, I could break it easily, but I don't want Lomax going ballistic about my insubordination.
"I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty awful," I mutter. "But I’ve only got three months left. After that I’m walking out of here free and rich, so I just have to deal with it."
Marlow opens his mouth like he wants to ask something else, then thinks better of it and instead steps closer again.
"You’re hurt. Your chest… and your eyebrow are bleeding, and so is your cheek. You need someone to patch that up."
His hand lifts toward my face and, without warning, he touches me, and the second our skin makes contact, something like the strongest shiver I’ve ever felt rips through my entire body! It's similar to an electric current, and for a moment the pain just disappears.
Everything turns warm and weightless, like I’m suspended in soft gold and pink light, floating somewhere above everything.
"Oh…" it slips out of both of us at the same time, and for a second I just think, did he feel that too?
"Your touch," I blurt out, "dear Fate, it’s almost…" I struggle to get the words out because my thoughts are scattering in every direction. "That shiver… it felt almost like…" I swallow hard. "Like fated mates’ First Touch."
The glorious moment breaks immediately as Wilhelm stops counting and lets out a mocking snort.
"What shiver? Mutants don’t have fated mates, you dumbass. They’re not people!" Then he leans in slightly, a mischievous grimace on his face, and adds, "And you’re a purple alpha. They can only find their True Mates among rose omegas. Did you forget?"
But I don’t care what he mumbles; I just want more of Marlow.
"Please," I whisper, even though I don’t even know what I’m asking for.
The touch comes back. Marlow’s hand moves slowly across my face, and I swear I feel like I’m gliding high on something narcotic while he runs his fingers through my hair in a careful, soothing way that feels unreal.
For a few seconds we’re both just stuck in it, sharing the same moment without interrupting it, and I can tell from his face that he’s a little dazed too.
"Alright, enough petting," Wilhelm cuts in, his voice brimming with irritation. "We’re leaving before I get chewed out by management."
He shoves the gurney so abruptly that Marlow’s hand slips away from my face. Marlow blinks, steps back, then turns on Wilhelm with his brows drawn together.
"You’re gonna get chewed out if management finds out how you treat him."
Wilhelm snorts. "He’s just a fucking mutant. A monster, not a person. Nobody cares what happens to him."
Marlow goes pale at that.
Then Wilhelm starts pushing again, not caring about getting his baton back, and we move off while Marlow stays behind watching me, and I twist my neck so far it feels like I might snap it just to keep his mint-silver eyes in view.
"Marlow…" I whisper. "That’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard."
Then I close my eyes because losing sight of him hurts in a very physical way, like something dragging a blade across my chest.
The wheels rattle as Wilhelm pushes me down another corridor, neon lights flashing overhead as we take two more turns, and I can hear him breathing hard beside me, still pissed off. Somewhere ahead a door slams, a keypad beeps, and then we roll into a room.
"I’ve got good news for you, mutant," Wilhelm growls, still riding that anger and whatever embarrassment he’s got left from earlier.
"If you liked that alpha so much, you’ll get plenty of chances to stare at him and jerk off. Your sperm production’s been dropping lately, and Lomax keeps complaining your little factory isn’t pulling its weight."
He gestures toward a massive glass wall, and for a second I almost forget everything else and just stare because it’s an enormous one-way mirror, and on the other side is a cafeteria packed with people eating dinner.
I watch it for a moment, trying to figure out if these are the participants in Alpha Activation, vectors and varias who came here for hormonal reprofiling. And it seems like they are.
"Yup," Wilhelm mutters. "Look at the people your body is supposed to be helping."
On the opposite side of the room, away from the glass, there’s a standard living space: a bed, a wardrobe, a table and chair, even a small door that likely leads to a bathroom and shower, plus a desk and a laptop, so on paper it seems almost comfortable, like a hotel room.
Well, look at that. Full luxury treatment.
But the illusion of normality doesn't quite hold up under inspection, though. My freedom is fake. There's a heavy ankle monitor strapped around my leg, and even on the rare occasions they let me leave, usually once a week, I still have to wear it, a reminder of my fate.
"Like your new vantage point, you weirdo?" Wilhelm mutters. "Maybe it’ll make your balls more useful."
I grit my teeth as anger surges through me, at Wilhelm, at the entire damn team, at everyone feeding off me while they dissect me piece by piece.
Then it just comes out: "You know I could kill you, right?" My voice is steady when I say it, and I lift my wrist so the reinforced titanium and carbon-fiber cuffs clink together. "I could tear these off. I could’ve gotten up and turned you into a stain on the wall. With one move."
Wilhelm has heard it before, especially when I’m exhausted and cornered and done being treated like a specimen, so he just shrugs.
"But you won’t," he says. "Because you know you’d get life instead of a few more months of experiments."
I clamp my jaw shut because the bastard is right.
He removes the cuffs and leaves quickly, like he doesn’t want to push his luck, and the door slams shut behind him with a keypad beep. Yeah, I’m locked in. I leave when they allow it, I come back when they decide.
Of course I could break the door down if I wanted to because none of them actually know what kind of monster I am or what I can become.
They’ve never seen it, and that’s probably for the best, because I have two faces: one that just looks like a monster, and the other, much worse, an actual monster.
A predator, a killer. Not many have seen that form, well… not many alive.
Most people believe I can transform the way purple alphas do, into a more massive form that can extend bony spikes from the purple lines that mark the sides of their limbs, but that's not the case for me… I am something different.
Slowly I sit down on the bed. It’s wide and comfortable. My head is still spinning from blood loss, but underneath it is something else too, a strange euphoria that won’t go away because Marlow’s touch is still humming through my system.
Everyone says magical ABOs can’t have fated mates because we’re genetic anomalies and normal compatibility isn’t supposed to work for us.
Regular people usually recognize their True Mate in three ways: through so-called First Touch, an irresistible Allure scent, or the First Orgasm, during which their souls merge in an epic spectacle of light and electric discharges.
But that’s for ordinary alphas and omegas, not for the bizarre category we are, something separate and variable that nobody really understands.
I press my forehead against the glass and stare into the cafeteria. At that exact moment the doors open and I freeze because Marlow walks in.
He’s finally made it through the line and joined the others. My eyes lock onto him immediately, on his slim, graceful frame, on the fluid way he moves… Damn! He really is beautiful, almost painfully so, in a way that feels ferocious rather than delicate, and I’ve never seen anyone like him.
Then I notice him sit down across from another alpha and my chest tightens, because right… I’d almost forgotten; everyone here is paired, vectors and varias.
Wilhelm called Marlow a varia, meaning he’s meant to shift toward an omega hormonal profile, which indicates he already has his vector.
I narrow my eyes.
So it’s him, the alpha who’s supposed to get Marlow pregnant, tied to him in this program, and the thought of it twists in my gut so hard it hurts.
But very quickly reality catches up with me.
What am I even imagining here?
In three months I’ll be gone, leaving nothing behind but tissue samples and genetic material for them to dissect, and unlike the last facility I worked at, I won’t have more contact with the participants, so that brief moment with Marlow is probably the only interaction we’ll ever have.
He isn’t mine, and he never will be.
What's more, he can’t be, because he’s too perfect to look twice at something like me, let alone choose it.
I’ve never had a real relationship, only casual encounters, because who would build anything with a monster?
I’m a curiosity, something that makes people uneasy and aroused at the same time, but that kind of attention doesn’t turn into a shared life, love, respect, family.
People want me because of what my pheromones do, but wanting and choosing are not the same thing.
Only in those short moments, when I dare to dream, I think of someone who could look at a monster and… stay.
One special person.
Beauty and the Beast has a nice ring to it.
Marlow would fit that story almost too well, but the problem is that tales like that don’t exist anywhere except in fiction, and in real life monsters don’t get happy endings.
In real life, monsters get killed.