Page 22 of The First Alpha on the Planet
“Fel will see to ya. It’ll be alright, man. They’ve been waiting for someone to do the ol’ chomp.” Gorm grinned and turned his head, saying something I didn’t catch before Wallace waved and ended the call.
“I’m going to go rinse off and talk to Fel.” Wallace walked away, and I slipped from the bed in a stumble, head like cotton and fluff.
“Not without me, you’re not!” A snarl broke free of me as jealousy rose. “Trotting off to hang with some horny omega.”
Wallace stared at me as I ran into him in my haste. As we bumped, our tails found one another for that brief curl. He tilted my chin up and stared at me, eyes full of sadness. “What do you want to happen from this?”
“Ideally, nothing. More ideally? Round two… Seventeen… I lost count.” I met his gaze as he leaned in and kissed my lips with the gentleness of a moth’s wings.
“You?” I couldn’t help but ask the loaded question.
“I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”
And, fuck, if that didn’t sum up everything for me, too.
Chapter Nine
Wallace
After taking the fastest shower in the history of the universe, we blew out of the house without so much as a goodbye. Both of us, unaccustomed to our wings, ran down the street, passing by the odd omega going about daily life like nothing in the world was different.
When we got to the medical center, Doc glared at me as we whipped by, brows pinched.
“Friend Wallace!” Fel met me at the doorway to his hall and took me into a treatment room, windows already alight.
“Platonic friend, right?” Roan’s snip made something dark, predatory, and nonsensical preen within me.
“Of course. Wallace is friend, not bedmate.” Fel almost laughed. “Besides. I have secured the necessary genetic contributions for egg laying from a few betas and the alpha Kris.”
“Krismas, you mean Rothnal?” Roan mouthed the names, brow creased. Likely trying to remember who the male was.
“Yes, a red alpha with stark green hair he kept pulled back.” Fel beamed. The alpha had been a quiet addition to our team, and for his color had been given the name of the old Terran holiday with customs based off an old religion that involved eggs and bunnies and worshiped a fat man in a suit. Or was it the morbid effigy of an emaciated Semite on a stick? I never could tell. History got distorted before the Progenitors.
“See, he doesn’t need me, Roan.” I flopped onto the examination table and went limp.
“I do not, in fact, need you. Please remove yourself from my table.” Fel shooed me away as I slipped off.
“The other one. You, omega with the color of fostinum.” He beckoned a reticent Roan to the table and gently eased him back.“It’s very easy to forget your lot doesn’t have the education we had access to. It’s a shame.”
Fel fiddled around the room, pulling out something for a blood draw, which he took with such quick and perfunctory touch that Roan barely had time to hiss and draw his arm back before the device had done its thing. Satisfied, Fel pushed the device into something on the wall where a vial popped out and slotted into a space.
“What the—” Roan flinched while Fel engaged the computer and positioned the 4D scanner. “Hey!”
“Okay, let me log data.” Fel typed away in the air, filling in Roan’s name as he spoke. The characters, though foreign, had become familiar in so short a time, as any other language did with brainstem chip technology.
“Right. Age, date of transformation?” Fel added more information in, consulting with another window to translate Roan’s years to theirs and their seasons to our lunar cycles.
He’d only been transformed for a few months. It surprised me, but it seemed right. Roan always felt so much older than me, that it was interesting to feel more on his level.
“Okay, and the last time you’ve copulated with a beta?” Fel held a hand up, fingers poised.
“I don’t think he—” I flinched when he answered.
“Two weeks ago? This season thing has been unbearable. I had to have some relief on the journey. I do apologize, Wallace.” Roan didn’t look at me, but the bottom wanted to fall from my stomach.
Fel gave me a knowing look, and my stomach gave me no signal that it was going to return.
“We encourage the males that have been with one but not the other to wear a collar if they do not wish to mate. We also encourage collar use to keep from one of us being claimed against our will.” Fel stared at his screen, avoiding my gaze ashe scrolled through things. “When our kind wished to copulate…they seldom cared if they were compatible, only that eggs were born.”
