Page 28 of The First Alpha on the Planet
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 saidit was somewhere between a kee-wee and grape. Though, grape had become a totallydifferentterm 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. “Hefeelsthings?”
“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.
