Chapter Seventeen
Wallace
Noel never found the claw crackers he was looking for, but a big rock did the trick. Apparently Revulon were delicious?
I spent the better part of three days freezing, storing, cooking, and serving the creatures to hungry locals who had no objections to the meat.
The public kitchens roiled with steam and the oily scent of gamey meat. Low set tables spanned across a shaded courtyard, shaded by overreaching trees. And at each long table, omegas sat, armed with rocks, beating the fat claws of their enemies into submission to pick free the flaky meat within.
Of all our crews, only Gorm and Noel saw fit to eat the creatures. Noel, because he didn’t know any better, and Gorm, because he would try anything once. Or twice.
Gorm was Gorm, and I refused to make excuses. But what did it say about me that I was totally willing to cook it?
I maaaayyyy have tasted the broth. Wasn’t bad.
Sarge had avoided the area like the plague since everything went down.
Having been Revulon at one point, he found the prospect particularly difficult.
And he didn’t want Doc around it, for understandable reasons.
The scent clung to my hair, my skin, and scales, imbedded in my clothes. I smelled delicious.
A sickening chorus of crunches drew me inexorably toward the dining yard, and I stared out, each of them eagerly gorging themselves on the succulent flesh.
A low, droning chime hummed through the air. The only people looking up and around were the former hybreeds, including myself as I squinted skyward until I found the faint shape of incoming airborne transport.
A beep alerted me to a private call, and I waved to accept it. Zurok patched in a floating window before me and gave me a forced smile. “Wallace, would you like to come along for a meeting with a dignitary from another commune?”
“Uhh, what would I be able to contribute?” I shrugged, and Zurok smiled.
“You are my kin.” Zurok spoke those words as if they carried leaden gravity in them. “And Liru wishes to attend with Roan and the eggs. An alpha present would do nicely, especially one that would be happy to bring some steamed Revulon claws?”
And there the crux of it lay. Food. I nodded in agreement and ended the call with a wave.
I sighed heavily and packed up an enormous gathering basket full of fresh claws and a few rocks, to be safe.
I made my way out of the kitchens with a wave to the other staff and directed myself toward the offices and affairs buildings where Zurok worked with other public service workers.
His role as spokesperson for the commune in something of a management and mayoral assignment, necessitated a lot of space for his purposes.
And since the public services building handled orders of food and trade from other communes, I found myself there quite often with requests.
So, when I made it there with the claws still steaming, three faces I recognized brightened up as I sauntered in, while two others perked up with interest. I gave Roan a sultry smile, my tail curling in invitation to him as his cheeks flushed and he glanced away.
To the other members of my family unit, I offered polite nods, greeting Liru first as an omega.
I was beginning to learn the tail gestures by instinct, and my flick of equality, acknowledging Zurok as an alpha equal to me, earned a little huff of pride. “Liru, Zurok. And who do we have here?”
A watery green omega with bright and silvery pupils tilted his head and smiled at me, eyes drifting more toward my basket of food than my face, though his tail gave a sign of greeting. “Greetings, Alpha.”
Instead of offering my hand for a shake, our tails trailed out to tap at one another in acknowledgement, and to his partner I offered the same.
“This is Sarka.” Zurok gestured toward the green omega.
“And this is my mate, Tsul.” Sarka exchanged a soft curl of tails with a rather petite blue omega at his side, not like Vil’s royal blue or Noel’s watery paleness. His scales were dark and sinister, framing pale skin, hair a white sheet over his shoulders, almost hiding beautiful golden eyes.
I offered a nod of my head to the male. “Greetings, Alpha.”
I studied the pair; Sarka dressed much like Zurok and myself, meaning, he also identified as alpha.
“Sarka manages the Delta colony and was tasked with monitoring their wilds, and are therefore responsible for tonight’s meal.” Zurok lifted his chin and flicked his tail with a sharp snap.
Tsul, the deep-blue omega, reached out and took one of the claws without invitation and delighted as his sharp little claws pried apart the shell with ease, a feat of strength even I couldn’t manage.
And so, when I raised my brows in surprise, Sarka gave me a slight glance.
“The smallest of us have the greatest fine strength.”
His gaze trailed back to his mate with a curl of affectionate tail and with a slight blush to the dusky skin of his cheeks, he spoke again. “And the biggest appetites.”
“One does not turn down the opportunity to consume their enemies. And if we are to take the blame for this oversight, I might as well enjoy the fruit of war.” With oily clawtips, Tsul pulled flaky meat free and ate, juices dripping over his chin.
“Revulon are very resistant to physical attacks until they are hosted by a Colthraxian. Are you certain you destroyed their corpses?” Sarka tilted his head toward me, and my upper lip twitched.
“Very certain. We accounted for every corpse and made sure to find the Colthraxian. They were all preserved and are in the lab to see if they can trace back who their lineage traced from. I found a database of genetic samples and my operating system, and I programed a cross reference, and we were able to narrow it down to four individuals from Epsilon and Delta.” Roan opened a window with a flick of his wrist and drew out a sheet of charts with images of a few omegas of varying colors, all with bitterness in their eyes.
“Hey, don’t discount what I did, man.” Merriel’s voice piped up over Roan’s droning speak about the programming he’d done. So, when Roan stopped, he glared and lowered his head, gesturing for Merriel to speak.
“Spectrography! You’ve got satellites capable of creating heat maps and topographical searches, so I just made it a bit more sensitive, and boom, my dudes.
Tweak this and that and there you go! All the bastards are lit up—oh.
” Merriel’s tone dropped off as a new window lit up and showed moving dots all over town and a huge mass in the public kitchens.
“Well, once you’ve gathered up all the dead Revulon and incinerated them…
And everyone’s done digesting their meat…
This will tell us where any living ones are. ”
Tsul chewed slowly. “Interesting. Well, in two days, this will be a very useful mapping program.”
“Yeah, and check it out, if I change it to this—” The dots changed, distributed about a dozen homes and milling around the streets. Merriel laughed.
“Is this Noel’s DNA?” Roan stared at the pulsing dots on the map.
“Nah, it’s Gorm’s.” Merriel’s pleased tones made everyone in the room aside from Tsul and Sarka shudder.
Though, the two did look curious, Zurok informed them of Gorm’s prodigious manwhoring capabilities, to which they both shared our expression.
“Yeah, gross, right? So, if I change it to Noel’s,” Merriel said, altering the map so palest-blue dots hovered about.
In the office where we stood, there were five pulsing beacons, not four. Roan and myself had been improved by Noel’s genes, and Zurok and Liru had their spots as Merriel zoomed in to our location. But what also lit up…
Everyone glanced at Tsul as he pried apart another claw mercilessly to reach for more meat. As if only then sensing our stare, he glanced up and blinked.
“You’re related to Noel, apparently.” Merriel’s laugh petered off. “Like, really related.”
“Well, his patrons did originate from Delta.” Zurok scratched at his neck lightly, fingertips grazing the mark that Roan had left on him, one that had drawn them closer. Part of me wondered if it’d morph into something sexual in time, and strangely, I didn’t mind.
“Nah man. I’m not certain, but they’re like—” Merriel changed a few things, and Tsul lit up while another dot somewhere else lit up, too. “Yeah, half-siblings.”
“Oh, my egg was brooded from a lifeseed farm before they were compromised. We very well could be siblings.” Tsul licked at his fingers.
“Only certain eggs are selected to be opened and altered to become lifeseeds, so we could have been born from the same clutch and only him selected. My egg was put into stasis for a long while.”
“Technically, he’s only sixty years old. We tried waking the eggs from stasis only to find them already infected with Colthraxians.” Sarka’s lips twisted wryly. “Despite his na?ve nature, I do care for him.”
Tsul took another wet bite as if the revelation meant nothing to him. It was hard to have sibling bonds, one supposed.
“I feel like such an ass asking this—” I stared at the two. “Um. I’m not from here and the customs throw me off. You identify as alpha, Sarka?”
Sarka nodded, no shame in it. “Managers typically do. We’re more dominant. We’ve found that when there’s no alphas or betas around, some omegas kind of adapt. So, our theory goes, as we say.”
“Lucky me, right?” Tsul took another bite and hummed.
Something about his feckless mannerisms and general lack of concern for the things around him that I once thought was a Naleucian thing, was likely genetic.
Tsul, such a dark blue, the more I stared, resembled Noel a lot. “Our bond is eternal and perfect.”
“Eternal and perfect.” Sarka nodded, letting his tail entwine with the smaller one’s with a gentle squeeze and lingering coil that borderlined on inappropriate, from what I’d seen around.