Chapter Twelve
Roan
If they noticed, they made no comment as we returned, shoulders pinched like two chastened children.
We returned with what appeared to be impeccable timing as a few stray omegas gathered around, bringing dishes of food out so we could sit around the expansive room, the cushions on the floor arranged in artful groupings, things avoiding a decorative mosaic in a spiraling pattern over the floor done in a rather busy pattern of soft grays.
But as we settled in, tiles on the floor shifted and pulsed, lowering into a depression that slowly filled with churning water with a splashing fountain that the children ran to with absolute glee, splashing one another with hissing laughter.
I barely had two bites in my mouth before Doc leaned up against a rather violently orange-and-brown-striped alpha, and glanced at me with a wry smile.
“Not a word,” I said, pointing at him as rage bubbled within me, manifesting through my tail with a snap.
He raised a single brow and took a smug bite off a strange fork, his lithe body on full display save for a rather rustic cropped top and a drape of beaded cloth that obscured his genitals and hung casually over his hips.
“It’s going to eat you alive if you don’t say it.” The alpha beside him, a male I’d known to be a full-blooded human once upon a time, reached over to rest a hand on Doc’s pale-white locks that spilled over his shoulders, a few strands pinned about his head artfully to keep them from his face.
“Sarge is right,” Vil said, smirking over the edge of a vaselike cup, taking a long swill of a pale-yellow juice with a rather striking flavor unlike any fruit I’d known of.
Though, Noel said it was somewhere between a kee-wee and grape.
Though, grape had become a totally different term since his day.
My Terran English lexicon still categorized the word as a type of assault.
Apparently, it was a fruit they used to make alcohol.
“Fiiiine!” Doc laid his head on Sarge’s shoulder, an evil grin twisting his lips. “You’re part of our crew, now. A lowly scavenger!”
My eye twitched. “That’s not what… Do you have any idea how this whole feud started?”
Doc shrugged, and Vil glanced away, earning a sideways glance from Noel.
“That’s not really a story I want to bring up. It’s old news. Water under the table.” Vil waved a hand.
“Bridge,” Noel added.
“Bridge under the table!” Vil cleared his throat.
“No, it is water under the bridge.” Noel sighed. “Idioms are not your strong suit.”
“Hey, I’m not an idiom. And if I’m an idiom, what are you for fucking me?” Vil huffed and I wondered what I’d ever seen in the male.
“A long time ago, Vil and I were romantically involved…” I glanced toward the children and back before clearing my throat.
“Romance wasn’t part of it at all.” Vil’s upper lip curled.
“Anyway. We are both exclusively top and our one-night encounter on a joint effort project ended—” I cleared my throat.
“We invited a third thinking they’d be the solution to our night, and Roan ended up getting ahead of himself and decided to be the meat of the sandwich and—” Vil laughed and I hissed, cutting him short.
“So you’ve spent all this time being a jackass to us because you’re pissed off he conned you into bottoming?” Doc gestured around. “Because that’s how half the crew signed up. If you think Gorm is bad, it’s only because he’s a switch.”
Noel didn’t flinch at the admission.
“Does that bother you, N03?” I gestured toward my progenitor and earned a shrug from the washed-out blue male.
“I’ve been with many males before Vil. Humans. None satisfying. But, he chose me. Just as Wallace chose you.” Noel kept his expression flat. “Nirem used to tell me that being chosen by an alpha is the highest honor an omega can have, and the happiest moment in his life for a beta.”
“It isn’t.” An omega nearby, Zurok, I recalled, spoke up, his tone trite. “I was young when the last of them went away. It was a broken system, and I would kill every one of them and watch us go extinct rather than let that system reestablish itself.”
“That is also true,” Noel continued. “As I said, that is what Nirem told me. I grew up with this being told to me, and within hours of meeting Vil, he looked at me so happily and claimed me like nothing else mattered. When he chose me, I felt powerful for the first time, complete, like part of me wasn’t missing. ”
Doc muttered something under his breath. “He feels things?”
“Yes, I feel things. I feel many things. I don’t have the greatest expression in the known universe, but I do feel.” Noel extended his middle finger and gesticulated it at Doc.
“Sorry to butt in here, dudes, but if you could just look up here for a moment.” Merriel’s voice spoke up, and we glanced around until a generated image of a man holding his index finger to his thumb in a circle, other fingers thread, held to his thigh, popped up. “The game, my dudes.”
Noel’s eye twitched. His tail did a complicated cringe and flicked, slapping the ground.
The omegas around us, those that had been born and raised on the planet, visibly tensed.
“Am I to understand that these gestures have meanings?” Zurok whispered, leaning toward Wallace in a way that irritated me.
“The middle finger means fuck you but like, the bad fuck you. Like, may you be fucked by a person in a way that displeases you.” Wallace shrugged, and the omega nodded seriously.
“Rape?” Zurok sneered.
“Ugh, no! It means, like… Go fuck yourself. Go masturbate and be miserable about it, kinda?” Wallace shrugged.
“I see, and the other gesture?”
“No clue. It’s ancient Terran.” I glanced over at Noel, who rose to stand with a huff.
“Come, Nexus. It’s bedtime.” He opened his arms, and the little one glanced from the image to Noel before mimicking the gesture.
Noel dropped his arms, eye twitching once more, and left.
Everyone glanced at a clueless Vil who just shrugged.
“Doesn’t mean anything, my dudes. It’s an old Terran custom where you trick someone into looking. The whole goal is to be pissed off about losing the game.” Merriel laughed and Noel snarled from somewhere deeper in the house.
“Roan and Wallace, congratulations on your mating. I wish you get extra space egg-nant!” Noel’s shout from down a winding hall made me flinch.
“Probably too late on that one. Fel said he’s got two eggs about to drop and has been fully seeded so like…may your wish come true, Noel!” Doc shouted out and earned a rather pleased huff as Nexus stared at his hand and pouted, shoulders pinched.
“I bad?” The little one sniffed.
“Nah, you’re good. C’mere, runt.” Vil opened his arms and instead of only Nexus, Noah ran over too. They both fought for space. “Papa is dealing with big feelings right now, ’kay?”
Nexus nodded seriously. Noah, for his part, seemed more interested in trying to climb Vil’s chest to grab for his ear.
“Haha! Alright, little one. I didn’t make you, so you don’t get to steal my piercings.” Vil pulled a fussing Noah away and gave him a little kiss to the top of his head. “So, let Papa cool off for a bit, and then we can go pester him.”
“Pester?” Noah’s little voice piped up before he shot out of Vil’s arms and ran off in the direction of Noel. “Pester!”
Noel shouted from somewhere down the hall in surprise before laughter, subtle and warm, ended the scuffle with little giggles.
If children could make that much of a difference in the beast that Noel once was, cold and destructive and wrong as he had been, Roan wondered what it would do to him. But he feared what two would do. He didn’t know if he could handle two.
Vil excused himself as people cleaned up half-eaten plates.
Longing glances passed around the room from lonely omegas.
Many wished it were them. And it would be me. I knew it.
Wallace leaned into my side and took a deep breath…probably sniffing me. Pervert.
“Did we do the right thing?” Wallace’s tail coiled with mine in that intimate way that let me know his question came from the heart. He wanted it. And I reciprocated by coiling my tail thoughtlessly back.
“Who the fuck cares? It feels good right now.” I leaned over to give him a soft kiss.
“It does. Want to go back to our room?” Wallace raised a brow.
“I’d rather we talk about moving out of Mom and Dad’s house and somewhere where we can be loud and I can ponder about a nest.” Roan huffed. “If it takes.”
Wallace swallowed nervously. “Sure thing.”
“Have no worries, friends.” Zurok smiled beatifically. “We will all nest and be very happy.”