Page 5 of The First Alpha on the Planet
“I went ahead and finished your email to have the ship ready. Minimal crew of hybreeds 40 percent or greater.” She waited for my praise, and I grudgingly gave her a noise of acknowledgement.
“And have meat packed. Protein. I’d kill for something raw.” I laid my head back and sighed. “Earliest possible takeoff.”
“Well, looks like we have all the right crew on standby. With hazard pay and an unknown return date, we can leave tomorrow after 0900.”
“Atta girl.” I wished everything in my life could be that easy.
Chapter Three
Wallace
I laid back on one of their strange loungers, the space for a tail hollow over my smooth backside. They hooked a needle into my neck, going for a good artery there, and the serum that pumped into me tingled.
“I got good news and bad news,” Doc said from somewhere in his clinic. This one had separate rooms and other omegas trained in healthcare, but they let Doc keep our team treated.
“Am I going to die?” I called out from around the corner and earned a hiss of reprisal.
“At least pretend to not hear us, thank you!” Doc’s churlish tones quieted me.
Noel had some theory about my line of hybreeds needing repeated exposure and large doses because my percentagehadincreased, little by little. I’d hit fifties sometime a week ago. It hadn’t moved since, though, and one of the omegas kept passing by the room, staring at me again. My burgeoning alpha status made me somewhat rare, as only a few of us aboard the ship carried the status. They were often the more unstable hybreeds.
Still, the pretty green one stared at me, blue freckles highlighting his cheeks.
“No.” I glared as he slid by once more, face faltering as I offered him rejection. A sudden guilt overcame me, and I sighed. “Sorry to be rude. I don’t want to… I like fucking to be special, not…” I waved my hand about.
“It wasn’t my intention to offer you my body, though I wouldn’t mind. I merely wanted to see if I could add my own input to this, as I have worked with lifeseeds before.” He stood more in the doorway, slight posture slouching with a curvaceouslilt to his hips, tail not doing the curlique fuck-me come-hither thing all the others did when they wanted in my pants.
“Ever worked with a mix like me? I’m bloody more Tal than human.” I pouted and rocked my head from side to side as the needle stung a little.
“No. But I can sense a stalling in your percentages. It’s strange, like your organs aren’t getting the message.” He took another step in. “I’m Fel, by the way.”
“Wallace.” I said it and flinched as his face tensed. “It’s got some old, old meaning, basicallyforeigner.”
“That isnotwhat it means here.” He pursed his lips and strode over to a terminal to gesture at it, asking my permission to snoop.
“I know, I know. Feel free.” If I could go all day without hearing what my name meant in their tongue, I’d be happy.
“Why would one name their childforeigner?” Fel opened a screen and panned through my records.
I didn’t like the silence that had spread from down the hall. It sounded like a fight was about to break out until Doc’s ultimatum.
I sank back in my seat as the omega before me made dozens of hand gestures, scrolling through text in a way that was much slower than I’d seen Noel do. I’d thought him the norm until finding other omegas. He was built different, I supposed. “What’s up with them?”
I gestured my head down the hall before Fel gave a gesture with his tail that was paramount to a shrug. The herbal scent of something they used as a cleaner reminded me of rosemary in a way, and my stomach growled. Mind wandering to food, as it always did, I asked. “What plant makes that smell?”
“Furano vine distillate.” He tabbed through a few pages.
“Is it edible?” I waited, and he shrugged.
“Not poisonous. Nutritional value is nil. It’s a great cleaner, though.” He tapped away in the air, glancing about.
“It smells like an herb, a seasoning we use. Makes meat taste better.” I sniffed at the air again and they hummed.
“Shouldn’t be harmful in the least. Do you need some of the distillate? It’s very bitter.”
“The dried plant material, ideally.” I sat up and stared at him hopefully.
“Sounds lovely. I’ll pluck some from my garden in the morning if you offer me a taste.” He gave me a smile, and his tail did something, a flick—not a sexual one. Just a little motion that caught my attention. I made a note to pay more attention to it, because it felt like half of what they were saying was missing. Noel felt like that sometimes, but he was infinitely worse at the tail gestures, as if he grew up without—which he did.
