Vengeful Bonds, page 2
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Ollie said, taking his hand and attempting to pull him back down. “We could be way off base.”
Everyone in that room—even Deke—knew his mate was placating him. He could feel Ollie’s worry through their bite. He could feel how stressed he was making him, but it was like he was no longer in control of his own body, and not like when his alpha took control but like…nobody was in control. His brain was a runaway train about to jump the fucking track and take out a bus full of nuns.
“How would we know?” he heard Fen ask, his voice seeming a thousand miles away.
“A DNA test is the only way to know with a hundred percent certainty,” Binnie said, his tone grim enough to let Deke know the other alphas were definitely taking it seriously.
“No,” Ollie snapped, the venom in his voice startling the others, Deke included. “We’ve already ruled that out as a possibility.”
“What? Why?” San asked. “Don’t you want to know?”
Ollie turned away to stare at the garden, ignoring San’s perfectly logical question.
“We have…concerns,” Loch finally said when he realized Ollie wouldn’t.
“Concerns?” Fen echoed. “Like what? What could be more important than knowing the truth?”
Ollie whipped his head around, locking eyes with Fen. “What do you think will happen to me, to Loch, to Deke, if the government finds out that someone in our pack has the ability to alter someone’s secondary gender?”
“Why would they care?” Seth asked, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
Deke didn’t get it either. If Ollie was this adamant about it, there was obviously something more to it, something that felt just out of reach like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
“Why are fundamentalists like Binnie’s father working so hard to turn back the clock on omega rights?” Ollie prompted out of nowhere. “What’s their main objective?”
“Turning omegas into house slaves?” Fen spit bitterly.
“No,” Binnie corrected. “Turning them into breeders. They need more babies because our workforce is dwindling. They’re running out of people to do the necessary jobs.”
“That,” Ollie said, pointing to Binnie. “And what do you think they’ll do with someone like Deke when they realize he can alter anyone’s gender and turn them into an omega? A breedable omega.”
Deke was going to throw up.
Breedable omega.
Breedable omega.
Breedable omega.
Breedable omega.
The words beat against his brain like a bird trapped in a glass house. This was crazy.
Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
Every one of his brothers had presented by fifteen. Early by medical standards. Wouldn’t one of them be this mythical enigma if one existed? Deke was a late presentation and, so far, the worst alpha ever. He didn’t feel like an alpha in any way, shape, or form when his actual douchebag alpha wasn’t calling the shots.
He was the baby of eight. There was no planet where he was the chosen one. That wasn’t how this shit worked. Wasn’t it supposed to be like the seventh son of the seventh son or someone born when a once-in-a-lifetime comet blazed across the sky? Crazy shit like that?
He wasn’t even fully convinced he was supposed to be a regular alpha much less one that could control other alphas.
San gasped, hands flying to his mouth dramatically as he jerked forward in his chair, his crotch hitting the back of Binnie’s head, startling him. Everyone looked at him like he was insane, but he was only looking at Ollie. No, Ollie’s stomach. “Oh, my God. Are you pregnant?”
“Pregnant?” Deke yelped, snapping his gaze to glare at Ollie’s stomach. “No. That can’t be true. It can’t be.”
Breedable omega.
No.
No fucking way.
There was no way that Deke’s stoic, reliable beta was now somehow his omega. His whole body flushed, leaving his limbs tingling. His omega who he’d spent days and days and days knotting again and again, filling him up each time.
Deke’s knees gave out, sending him crashing down beside Ollie.
Pregnant. Baby. Babies? There could be more than one in there. Oh…holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.
“I’m barely old enough to drink,” he whispered, tears welling in his eyes before he rapidly blinked them away. Get it together. Some alpha he was.
It couldn’t be true, his brain supplied again.
Some super alpha wouldn’t be crying over knocking up their mate. They would be strutting around, thumping their chest, flexing on the other alphas…right? This was surreal. It felt like the world’s worst dream.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Ollie said, shooting a murderous look at San. “This is all speculation. If I am…you know…then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
They all sat in silence as Deke stared at Ollie’s perfectly flat stomach. Was there a baby in there? Their baby? His stomach somersaulted at the thought. A tiny baby that looked like Ollie. What had he looked like as a baby? Deke couldn’t picture it.
“A baby,” Seth whispered suddenly, unable to hold back a smile.
Saint rubbed Seth’s belly.
“It would be pretty cool to have a roly-poly chunky little baby in the house,” Fen said, his excitement palpable. He looked between Ollie and Deke. “He’d be so beautiful.”
“A pack baby would be pretty cool,” Binnie said, tilting his head back until he could make eye contact with San, who bit back a smile, then nodded.
Fen looked at Loch. “So…what’s the plan?”
Binnie groaned as San’s nails scratched his scalp from the chair above. He would never admit how right he felt sitting at the other alpha’s feet. Luckily, nobody else in the house would call him out on it. Not seriously, anyway. He leaned the side of his face against San’s knee. He heard him laugh softly before scratching a bit harder.
They were the only ones left in the living room after the pack meeting. Neither of them were really sure what to do now. Did they just go to their rooms and pretend they weren’t waiting for their beta to pop a plus sign on a pregnancy test? Did they start researching this enigma lore?
Binnie had planned to start working on the recon for their first mark, Josiah Stirling, to take down Dresden, but did that take a backseat now? He sighed. He wanted to avenge Josh. He deserved it. But shouldn’t the living come before the dead? Wasn’t that what Josh would have wanted? But Fen deserved some closure and, honestly, Dresden was too dangerous to ignore. He’d already ruined enough lives.
Binnie really thought he’d mentally prepared himself for whatever he would find when he and San returned. He was almost certain he’d find Loch and Saint had both capitalized on Fen’s and Seth’s respective heats. Their mating bites weren’t a surprise to either him or San. But Ollie and Deke? Yeah, he definitely hadn’t seen that coming.
He’d figured the two were endgame. Just like Binnie and San. It was why he was willing to be patient and wait for San to feel like it was enough. But he knew that Ollie, like San, was one to take things slow, look at things from every angle. And Ollie had convinced himself he was going to leave Deke behind. Though Binnie imagined that would have lasted no more than a week before Deke showed up at Ollie’s door and dragged him back.
They were a pack. They just hadn’t made it official yet.
Voices traveled through the open garden doors to where Binnie and San sat. Ollie had taken Deke outside to the garden. He’d said Deke needed some fresh air, but Binnie imagined he was just taking him somewhere he could have his impending meltdown without an audience. Binnie couldn’t make out the words, but it was clear from Deke’s tone he was beating himself up pretty badly.
“Should we…” Binnie gestured vaguely towards the garden.
“And say what? Sorry you might have accidentally altered the DNA of at least two pack members with your heretofore unmentioned freaky superpower?” San asked.
San was right. What could either of them say that would in any way comfort Deke? Binnie didn’t even know how he felt about the information. He was teetering somewhere between shock and disbelief. There was a surrealism to the event that made it seem like it couldn’t possibly be real.
Binnie closed his eyes, tipping his head back, eyes closed, enjoying San’s attention. “Feels nice.”
“You like sitting at my feet and getting your head scratched more than Wolf does,” San mused. “You really are a puppy.”
“Your puppy,” Binnie murmured without thought, eyes flying open to see how San received that bit of news.
The humor disappeared, replaced instead by a hungry look that made Binnie’s gut clench. San’s fingers tightened in Binnie’s hair, yanking on it. “Mm. Mine.”
Binnie had to bite back a groan. A lot had changed between them since they’d left for the cabin. They hadn’t fooled around since that first night where they could blame it on the alcohol. But they’d grown much closer in other ways. They’d talked for hours about everything and nothing, had cooked together every morning and night. They’d sat in the garden just outside the house. It felt a little like a honeymoon. Just…without the sex.
In the first days, Binnie had to initiate any level of casual touching between them. But somewhere along the way, it became routine for San to curl up beside Binnie or rest his head on his lap while he read a book he’d found in one of the drawers in the bedroom. He would leave drawings on Binnie’s pillow but he’d get embarrassed each time Binnie commented on them, so he just started quietly stacking them in a safe place. They were currently in the drawer beside his bed, the first thing he’d unpacked when they’d returned to his grandmother’s house.
“How do you think Ollie’s going to react if he is…pregnant?” San said, hesitating like he, too, couldn’t really wrap his head around it.
Binnie shrugged. “The same way he does everything, I suppose. He’ll research every single thing about it until he’s an expert, then make the rest of us look stupid by comparison. That’s just who he is. He doesn’t half-ass anything.”
San shook his head. “I know that. But, like, emotionally. He seems to be handling things so well. Too well. But everything changes when things go from theoretical to reality. Do you think he’ll freak out? Is he just in shock? I’d be coming unglued.”
Binnie let his eyes fall shut once more, enjoying San’s undivided attention. He was so greedy for his touch, his…everything. “I don’t know, really.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” San asked, exasperated.
Binnie shrugged. “He’s my friend. We watched each other’s backs and got our job done. Don’t get me wrong, I’d die for him, but it doesn’t mean we sit around talking about our feelings. That was more Loch’s thing.”
San was quiet for a minute before he said, “But you’ve slept together before. Haven’t you?”
Binnie frowned at him. “So? What does that have to do with feelings? I’ve slept with Saint, too, and I promise you, I never know what the hell that psycho’s thinking. Nor do I want to.”
“I—That’s crazy to me.”
“If I tried to connect with every person I ever fucked, I’d literally never have time to work.”
“Slut,” San whispered fondly. “Did you fuck all your coworkers or just your friends?”
“Not all my coworkers, but, yeah, most of my friends. But now, thanks to Josh, I have you…and your friends,” he teased.
Once more, San tugged at Binnie’s hair, his voice lowering in a way that made him shiver. “You gonna let the whole pack fuck you?” he asked, pulling his hair until he hissed in pain.
Goosebumps erupted along Binnie’s skin. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t pay to watch that.”
San sniffed delicately, then looked away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
When he looked back, it was clear he was playing. But Binnie couldn’t afford to keep playing like this if they were still doing the platonic thing. “New subject. This is making me horny.”
San rolled his eyes but nodded. “Can I ask a weird question?”
Binnie frowned, a bit of anxiety creeping up on him. “You can ask me anything.”
San was quiet for so long Binnie thought he changed his mind. “Would you want that?”
Binnie’s brain short-circuited. Maybe he and San weren’t on the same page. Did San have a problem with sharing within the pack? It was pretty common practice. Binnie didn’t mind being monogamous if it was a deal-breaker for San but he was surprised. He’d had no problem throwing himself into Fen and Seth’s post-coital cuddle puddle less than two hours ago.
He licked his suddenly parched lips. “For the—for the others in the pack to fuck me? I mean, I wouldn’t say no. Unless you have a problem with it, I mean.”
San’s brows knitted together. “No, not that. Fuck whoever you want as long as it stays within the pack. I just meant…if Deke can do what they think he can…would you want to change your secondary gender?”
Binnie’s pulse jumped. He hadn’t even thought of that. Could Deke change him into an omega? A beta? How would that even work? Betas had the original plumbing of their genotype. Beta-o had a uterus, it just didn’t work. The body didn’t ‘see’ it. Their hormones didn’t trigger so there was no heat cycle. Hence why it was so rare for beta-os to have children, even with other betas.
Beta-as had a knot, but they also didn’t have the hormonal response to trigger the biological reaction an alpha would have. They couldn’t knot. For some reason, beta to beta pregnancies had a far greater success rate than beta/alpha or beta/omega, but they hadn’t pinpointed why.
Binnie still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Changing betas back to their genetically sleeping secondary gender made sense to Binnie from a scientific perspective. Something in Deke’s semen, blood, or saliva triggered the beta’s body to make use of those dormant traits and organs. But, just like people who chemically transitioned their secondary gender—which happened—it was only something that changed the outside. No hormone, real or synthetic, could create organs out of thin air. Not yet, anyway.
Could Deke’s enigma do that?
When he realized he hadn’t given San an answer, he found himself stammering. “I-I don’t know. I’ve really never entertained it as a possibility. It would have been like me wishing I could grow wings and fly away. It just seemed too fantastical to ever give it any legit consideration. I guess I’m more practical than I thought because the idea of Deke being able to shift an alpha into a fertile omega...it just seems too farfetched to consider.”
San nodded, his hands petting through Binnie’s hair absently as he studied his face, still upside down from how Binnie looked up at him.
Finally, Binnie hesitantly asked, “Would you want me to?”
San seemed startled by the question. “What? No! I love being an alpha. I love that you’re an alpha.” After a second, his shoulders sagged. “But it does kind of suck that two alphas can’t have their own babies together.”
Binnie took a deep breath and let it out, grasping San’s long hands, entangling his fingers with San’s much prettier ones. “I’d consider it for you.”
“I would never ask you to do that,” San said, shaking his head.
Binnie squeezed his fingers. “You wouldn’t have to ask.”
San flushed, his gaze floating away from Binnie’s face, flushing a deep scarlet. “No, that’s not what I mean…”
“What do you mean?” Binnie pressed gently, pulling their joined hands to his shoulders so San had to sit forward, dropping his head lower.
Binnie wanted to be closer for this conversation. San sighed, then maneuvered himself to sit on the floor beside Binnie, facing him and taking his hands once more, this time to play with Binnie’s fingers like he’d rather look anywhere but at him.
“I mean, I have always…kind of wished…”
“Kind of wished?”
“That I could carry a baby.”
He said it so swiftly it took Binnie’s brain a moment to pull the words apart and make sense of them. San always wished he could carry a baby? Since when? Binnie did not see that coming at all.
“Really?”
San shrugged, his voice a bit muffled. “You have to understand, I never expected to be an alpha. Look at me. Everyone thought I’d be an omega. Seth and I always thought we’d be omegas together. Get pregnant together. Raise our babies together. Then I presented as an alpha and that fantasy bubble popped. Everyone hated me for it. Even me,” he finished with a whisper.
Binnie’s heart raced. “Are you saying you’d want to change your secondary gender?”
San shook his head violently. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you how I feel. I love being an alpha. I do. But it’s a fucking burden looking how I do. But I know you don’t want an omega,” he finished quietly.
Binnie frowned. “What? That’s not true,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t date omegas. It’s just hard to find one who is willing to play along with my specific…kink. Besides, that was before I met you. You’re it for me. Alpha, beta, omega. I don’t care. I just want you.”
San surged forward, sealing their lips together before he pulled back, seemingly embarrassed by the abrupt show of affection. “It’s hardly worth worrying about now,” he said, turning to face forward until they were sitting side by side, looking at the doorway. “We’re not even mated. There are a million ways for two alphas to procreate thanks to technology.”
Binnie’s heart tripped at the idea of them having babies together…in any way. San sighed. “Besides, the last thing we need is more eyes on us. If Ollie is pregnant, he’s going to need a doctor. Prenatal care. Who can we trust to keep this kind of secret?”
Binnie winced at the thought of some stranger ruining their lives due to some sense of duty. “Shit is getting so complicated.”
Seth popped into the room, looking cozy in a baby blue sweatsuit set. “Go downstairs to the basement.”
San raised his brows. “What? Why? I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think I can handle anymore big reveals. I’m exhausted.”
