REN
Ren
Walk the fuck away. Do it. Make your feet move in the other direction. No, stay exactly where the fuck you are.
They had had a leisurely breakfast and then a long goodbye. I hid in the shadows and watched, sipping my coffee like the pathetic fool I was. I had time before Gaston required my presence so sure, why not creep on them during breakfast?
Pressed up against Justice in that closet. I had known better. I should have walked away. It wasn’t just leveraging our past and his panic attack to get what I wanted. It wasn’t going to be enough. It would never be enough. I didn’t think I could go back to surviving off of gossip columns and annual reports. And Theo. I never should have touched him. I should have walked by that sushi class. No regrets, but I shouldn’t have done it.
I’d been tortured for 10 years. None of this would make that better.
Finally, they parted. Justice and Theo went left, hopefully off the ship for some adventure. Better yet, to his bed. Mackenzie went right.
At least you won’t have visions of threesomes haunting you all day.
Don’t do it, you jackass. Don’t.
Fuck.
My feet went right.
She walked slowly through interior passages of the ship. Down by the theater where nobody would be at this hour. She swung her arms, listless, ran her fingers along the edge of picture frames as she swept past, played with the hem of her skirt like she wanted to feel the fabric brush her body. She was the physical embodiment of wandering thoughts.
She slowed and cocked her head, stepping up to a door, reading the sign “Vendor Alley sponsored by Nesting Needs” and then peeked in the window. Her hand hovered over the doorknob, but she snatched it back. She tried again, but looked to her left to make sure the coast was clear. I leaned against the wall casually. She looked right, and I smiled when she saw me. She put her hand behind her back.
“Are we doing crime and stuff?” I asked
“I think it’s closed,” she said, smiling.
I prowled down the hall towards her and peeked in the window myself. Some lights were on, but it was deserted.
“Closed does not mean off limits.” I grasped the handle and pushed the door open. I’d gladly leave fingerprints behind for her. The room was lined with precisely marked 10 by 10 squares. Some had little more than a folding table with a stretchy tablecloth. Big vendors had their own lighting and took up two or three spaces.
He wandered by the first table showcasing a scent neutralizer company. She picked up a spray bottle and gave it a sniff, wrinkling her nose.
“Fragrance free my ass,” she said, putting it back down.
The next booth featured pack jewelry. Matching necklaces, bracelets, rings with all your pack’s birthstones in it. She ran her fingers through the necklace display, the charms clinking together. She picked up a ring, inspected it with a wrinkled nose ,and put it back down. It didn’t pass. I traced the ring on my thumb. Omegas had bite marks. Alphas had nothing to show who they belonged to.
“I thought you’d be off on adventures today with Theo?” I asked. I was utterly fascinated by watching her browse. She moved to the next table, touch just as active as sight.
“That costs money.” She shrugged and picked up a blanket and brought it to her nose to test it. The sign above it read “Super absorbent and FUZZY!” like it was hard to make those two characteristics go together.
I was about to remind her that Justice would have paid, but something nagged at me, shutting me up.
In my experience, omegas didn’t usually worry about money. They had packs or alphas who took care of them. Some had jobs. All omegas got a stipend from the government. We, as a society, had decided it was not advantageous to have financially desperate omegas running around making bad decisions to keep roofs over their nests. Not that that didn’t happen anyway, but universal basic income for omegas soothed our collective conscience, which made it easier to overlook the other darker shit that happened. Like, oh I don’t know, an alpha hooking up with a fourteen-year-old and waiting for her to perfume.
There was that squeezing feeling in my chest. Rage bringing itself online and powering up. There was something… unsettling here. Her questions about breakfast and barks. The money thing. She didn’t have bite marks. She was with an alpha for over 10 years and he didn’t bite her, bond with her. There was something sinister about that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Another booth across the room caught her eye. The blanket trailed after her like it felt so nice, her fingers wouldn’t let go.
“What is it?” She pushed on the contraption that was held up by a tripod and a long extension arm.
“A swing.”
“It’s too big for a swing. Are you supposed to lay down on it? And what are these for?” She examined one of the stirrup foot rests.
I took her by the waist and boosted her onto the edge of the swing, and hooked her feet into the stirrups. She looked at herself in the set up, not quite getting it yet. I jerked the support ropes and bumped her into my thigh twice. It wasn’t at the right height for this to be completely obscene.
“Oh! OH!” Mackenzie sat up, figuring it out. “People have these in their nests?”
“You can have anything you want in your nest.”
I unhooked her feet and stepped out from between her legs. With a toe that just touched the floor, she pushed and swung gently.
“What do you think it feels like to…” She flashed me a look. “Nevermind.”
I smirked as she wiggled out of the sex swing and moved on to the next booth. “Functional Pillows, LLC” was written in block letters right above a sign that read “Step on up and feel the difference.” The booth was huge. It took up three spaces. There was a round platform right in the center made out of their “patent pending high density foam”, much like the round beds some omegas favored for their nests.
Mackenzie kicked off her flip-flops and crawled up on the surface on hands and knees. I climbed on after her and stretched out on my side, one knee up and leaning on my elbow. The dense foam gave under pressure so it felt soft, but was still really supportive. Mackenzie stood and jumped, testing it out. It didn’t have any bounce. The space was littered with pillows of all shapes and sizes. Each was embroidered with the cutesy name that described the pillow’s function. She picked up “The Squisher” first. It was a long oval, extra fat in the center, perfect for squishing, I presumed. She hugged it and then set it down with a “hm” sound. I didn’t know if that passed her inspection, either.
“Of course I’ve seen ‘Nest Builder’ and ‘Pimp my Nest’, I never really thought about what other omegas put in their nests. I just have a mattress on the floor and a mountain of stuffed animals.”
The stranglehold of rage got just a wee bit tighter.
I had my own Justice trauma and that was the trigger. The mattress.
We were maybe 11. He hadn’t been on the bus. I had taken some kid’s bike, it hadn’t even been locked up. It had been cold, really cold. All the doors were locked. We had just watched a McFearson movie, where he broke into a house with a credit card. A gift card from my parents’ restaurant worked just as well. I had never been inside. The house was shabby. A tear in the sofa. Chairs held together with duct tape. The first bedroom was empty. The second was locked. The third was wide open.
It had a mattress on the floor and a milk crate to hold an alarm clock. Perfectly folded, neat stacks of clothes lined the floor against the far wall. Movement had caught my eye. I’d thought a mouse, maybe. Fingers. Fingers wiggling from under the closet door. There were two sliding bolts. I could barely reach the top one. He had been lying at an awkward angle so he could keep his face pressed to the crack between the floor and the door. His eyes were open, blinking, but he wasn’t there. I had dragged him by the arm onto the mattress and wrapped myself around him until he came back to me.
I cracked my neck and breathed through the impotent rage. Justice got panic attacks, I got rage I could do nothing about.
I drank Mackenzie in like her loveliness could extinguish all that. She swept her long brown hair over one shoulder. She was prone to playing with the tips of it, twisting a lock around her finger or just testing the cut edge with her index finger. She did that. Justice pinched his bottom lip. Theo clenched his fists in his pockets. And I played with my ring. We all had our self-soothing stims.
She grabbed another pillow, hugged it and dropped it with an “ew.”
“Why ew?” I stretched for it and pulled over to me. It had “The Booster” written on it in that blocky font.
“It’s too hard.” She knelt and pulled a different pillow to her and kneaded it like a kitten. “Do you think flings work?”
“Flings?” Oh to be able to wander through her thoughts and see how she connected all the dots to get here.
“You know. You break up, then you’re supposed to have a fling to get over it?”
“I presume it works for some people.”
“Did you have a fling after Justice?” When I didn’t answer immediately, she added, “That was too personal.”
“I fucked everyone that came within 20 feet of me.” I said with a sigh.
“Did it help?”
“No. But I’m a special case.”
“I’m supposed to have a fling.” She said, almost to herself as she picked at a thread on the pillow embroidery.
“Aren’t you having a fling with Theo?”
“Theo is not a fling.”
I stared up at the overhead light, hoping it would burn away the image of crawling in between the two omegas before it took hold in my brain.
“Are you going to?” I asked instead,
She shrugged. “Most of the alphas I’ve met so far don’t seem like good people. They’re not even nice. Well, except for you, of course.”
I laughed outright at that. “Darling, I’m not nice or good.”
She made a disgusted noise and rolled her eyes.
“I steal cars, and worse. I think that disqualifies me from the ‘good’ and ‘nice’ categories.”
“That doesn’t count.”
I laughed again.
“You said it was like rich people’s pranks,” she insisted.
“What if I was running around Port Haven stabbing people?” The almost-confession rolled off my tongue. And I held my breath.
“When you leave, don’t make me hate you.”
She glanced at me from under her lashes. “I’m not sure that automatically makes you a bad person.”
“Murdering people is generally a no – no. Wouldn’t you say, Sugar?” I licked my lips. The guilt tasted sour.
She crawled closer and pulled “The Booster” between her knees, pushing down on it like she could tenderize it.
“I was really little when it happened. So I don’t remember much. One of the betas in my birth pack…” She shrugged. “Something happened at a bar. She was assaulted, maybe. No one really talks about it, but all the alphas from the pack went down there and, well…” She left me to fill in the details. “My dads are good people and they… probably killed someone.”
It wasn’t abnormal for packs to deal out their own punishments, settle their own scores. And like Justice said, so long as you don’t fuck with the wrong people, no one paid close attention. Unfortunately for me, Nolan was the wrong people.
“So, what makes a bad person, then?” I asked, spinning my ring around my finger.
“I don’t know. Maybe hurting people you love on purpose,” she shrugged and reached for another Functional Pillow product.
“Ah, well, there you have it then. Justice makes me a bad person.”
She cocked her head, inspecting the pillow. “No, that doesn’t count either.” She said, almost absently. She flipped the pillow over and then stood it up on its end.
“I think Justice would disagree on that point, doll.”
“I think this hurts you more than it hurts Justice, so it cancels each other out.”
I winced at the gut punch. Why were my omegas going right for the jugular?
“Hey,” she said like it just occurred to her, “Why do you call me all these different nicknames?”
“Do you not like it?”
“No, it’s cute. It makes me feel…” She tucked hair behind her ear. “My name is really long, so most people shorten it for a nickname. Like Mack or Kenzie. Daryl went through this phase…” She flicked her hand like she could magic way the thought.
Daryl. His name was Daryl. That was a piece of information I really didn’t need to know. It just gave me an easy target for all my useless rage when this fairytale ended and we all went back to Port Haven. If I made it back to Port Haven.
“Mackenzie is who you are. Complete and perfect. I couldn’t bear to make you less than that.”
She stared into the middle distance now and her lips moved, but she made no sound. She straightened up and brushed her hair out of her eyes and shifted gears.
“What the fuck is this thing?” She hit the wedge-shaped pillow and it toppled over.
I rubbed my face to hide my smirk. Where to begin? I flipped it over again so the name of the pillow was upright and spun it to face her.
“The Presenter?” She sat back on her feet.
“It’s a presentation pillow.”
The pillow, made out of that high-density foam, was wedge-shaped, maybe a foot tall and sloped to be even with the bed. It had cutouts for comfort and divots for hand holds.
“Like a back rest?”
“Oh, do you not know this bit of alpha propaganda?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s to give you extra support in the presentation position during heat.”
She cocked her head, looking at the pillow from a different angle.
“I’m going to have to do more research to determine if it is biology or cultural programming.” I said with a wink. “The presentation position is believed to aid omegas in going deeper into need and having a more satisfying heat experience. And it reminds alphas of the only thing that really matters in the world.”
“What is that?”
“Satisfying their omegas needs.”
She snorted at that.
“Here.” I sat up from my casual sprawl and held a hand out to her. Once I helped her onto her knees, I bumped the wide flat end up against her legs. It was slightly more narrow than most wedge pillows I’d seen before, which would allow for more movement and access.
“Oh.” Tentatively, she bent at the waist and walked her hands forward until the pillow supported her hips. Her chest was flat against the long side and her head rested on the floor. “Ohhh.” She parted her legs to sink deeper into the position.
She made these yummy “mmm” sounds with her glorious ass high in the air. She wiggled her hips slightly, getting even more comfortable, rubbing her cheek against the smooth texture of the foam bed.
And then she purred and I just about died.
She gasped and sat up suddenly, blinking like she was surprised. “Well, that works.”
“So not alpha propaganda?” I smirked.
“I thought about this for a while.” she put a hand on her hip. “I’m supposed to have a fling.”
“Oh?” I was absolutely terrified of what she’d say next.
“You said I can do whatever I want with you. At the pool. You said that.”
“I did say that.”
“I want to have my fling with you.”
Be smart for once in your life and say no, Ren.
Dead. In jail. Or wrecked by two omegas and Justice Twill. Why the hell not? I was already ruined. I could enjoy the masochism for a few moments more.
I grabbed the front of her dress and jerked her to me. “Here’s the truth hidden by the propaganda. Omegas hold all the power. I’m powerless with you. I’d do anything you asked.”
She yelped when I pushed her onto her back and planted her feet on the floor. Supporting her lower back, I raised her up and tucked The Booster pillow under her ass. I gathered the hem of her dress and skimmed up her thighs. I nudged her legs even wider.
Then my heart skipped an actual beat. Her panties were pale blue with a swirling pattern of navy and white. Not a thong or a g-string. And already damp.
“Did Justice buy these for you?” I traced a finger along the edge from the top of her leg to where it disappeared between her thighs.
She screwed up her face and bit her lip like she didn’t want to answer but gave me a quick nod.
“Oh, precious, we are going to drench his panties.”