by N. J. Lysk
He wasn’t sure she was right, but then again, he wasn’t sure she was wrong.
The bond tugging the partners together could never be dissolved. This was meant to be part of the magical connection between the souls, or at least that’s what most religious and spiritual interpretations claimed.
But bonds were integrated by two people and sometimes people couldn’t make it work, no matter how well their genes were meant to interact when producing healthy offspring.
An unbreakable bond was a mess both legally and morally, which was probably why the history of where and how doctor Mengele had developed the technique was often glossed over. Uri still remembered sitting in a university classroom, shaking a little and waiting for the lecturer to mention the origins of repudiation. The teacher hadn’t. It wasn’t relevant to the law, she’d said when Uri had brought himself to ask afterwards.
It was hard to say what was worse, the history or the legacy.
And Uri had no idea what he could say now, he had no insight to offer, just unspeakable horror at both the circumstances Claudette found herself in and the equally horrifying solution she’d found for them.
“THAT WAS A MISTAKE,” was the first thing Mx Yave said as soon as they were alone.
Uri gulped, more in anger than regret. Of course it’d been a mistake, the woman had been betrayed so profoundly by an alpha she trusted that she wanted to destroy any chance of ever seeing her bondmate again—why would she react well to another alpha trying to influence her decisions?
“Did you know she’d react that way?” Mx Yave asked, sounding calm.
Uri glanced up, then shrugged and admitted, “I guessed it was likely.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t sure, and I thought...”
“You thought...?”
“I thought you’d have consulted with Mx Ahmed,” Uri admitted, glancing away. His other boss was an alpha herself and in such a delicate case, it wasn’t unreasonable of him to expect Mx Yave to seek advice. “I... I deferred to your experience.”
Mx Yave huffed and Uri frowned at him, unable to place the emotions on the older beta’s face. “I guess I should have spoken to you about myself first, shouldn’t I?” They sighed. “Well, I’m not Latifa, and I’m not Toni. I don’t want a suck-up, Uriel, I want advice. Solid advice, which you had and didn’t give me.”
“I’m sorry,” Uri said at once. “I—”
“Wasn’t finished,” Mx Yave interrupted, nodding when Uri shut up. “That was your mistake; my mistake was not telling you what I wanted from you.”
Uri hesitated. “It won’t happen again, but you should... maybe you’d have better luck with a beta. A man, not a woman, since...”
“Since her alpha is female?” Mx Yave asked, there was edge to their voice.
“Yes,” Uri said firmly. “Someone who could never remind her of her alpha, is there someone like that?”
He didn’t want to bring up Jun’s name, even though Jun was as non-threatening as anyone could be—almost bubbly at times and charming with his teenager good looks even though he was as close to thirty as Uri himself—and as a beta male as far from Claudette’s alpha as Uri could imagine without having ever seen her.
“I’ve met her alpha,” Mx Yave told him thoughtfully, “And I have seen them together. Claudette didn’t act like that around her.”
“Did she... did she submit?” he asked, lowering his voice without meaning to. It was the only word he had to speak about the deferential way omegas were expected to treat alphas, especially their own. It didn’t sound like he was being taken off the case, even though Claudette had clearly disliked him.
Mx Yave looked thoughtful. “Not exactly, but... she avoided looking at her alpha, and speaking to her directly.”
“Did her alpha speak to her?”
“Once.”
“And she responded?” Uri asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” Mx Yave said, sounding a little pained. He might not have had the ability to decipher scent, but he’d clearly realised the significance of that fact.
Uri sighed, looking away. “That’s why Claudette’s insisting on repudiation. She’s afraid she’ll go back otherwise.”
“Will she?”
Yes, Uri’s brain readily supplied. A bonded omega would go back to her alpha under almost any circumstances. It was why bonds were fucked up—or at least could very easily become so. You couldn’t give anyone that much power and expect them to never misuse it. But maybe...
Uri thought of the children, seven and ten. The ones Claudette’s alpha had picked up from school and flown across Europa without letting her know. The children that she’d kept in a ski resort in Moscow for a week while their mother lost her mind to the point where she’d had to be sedated. An omega without the support of her bonded partner was already vulnerable and any mother would have panicked at their children’s unexpected and unexplained absence. It was clearly not an accident. They’d been too far for the alpha to feel their bond, but then she had returned home and pretended everything had been planned and Claudette had simply forgotten... And she must have felt it then; despair like that didn’t leave you that fast. And yet, she insisted the whole thing had been planned in advance; why else would Claudette have copies of the plane tickets on her email account?
“Has the alpha ever threatened the children?” he asked finally. Since Claudette hadn’t mentioned anything, he assumed the kids had been just fine after their holiday.
“Not that I know of.”
Uri sighed. “Then yes, she very likely will go back.”
“Why the children?” Mx Yave asked, by-passing Uri’s despair with clinical logic.
Uri didn’t mind, he couldn’t help what he felt, but he didn’t want it to get in the way of their work either. Feelings weren’t admissible in a court of law. “It’s not guaranteed, but omegas sometimes can break an alpha’s hold on them if their children are threatened. It’s... well, the only bond strong enough.”
“Even stronger than survival?” The beta sounded disbelieving. If they had to ask, maybe they hadn’t been so wrong to ask for Uri’s advice.
“For a bonded omega, their alpha is survival,” Uri explained. It wasn’t something that could be explained, apparently not all the dramatic re-enactments—mostly by betas—on the small and big screen could convey this as well as Uri understood it even with just the budding sense of a bond he had any time he met an omega he was compatible with.
The senior lawyer didn’t respond for a moment. “I see.” The chair scrapped against the hardwood as they stood and turned away from Uri. For a moment he wondered if he’d given offense. But Mx Yave went to a cabinet in the back of the room and pulled out some glasses and a bottle.
“Here.” Mx Yave turned and placed the glass on the table. Whiskey, Uri thought, and almost laughed. “I apologize if I have overstepped.”
Uri stared at his boss, then shook his head and looked down at the tumbler. It was just a finger and he drank it all at once before making himself look up again. “You needed to know.”
“Yes, now I know what we need; we have to get her sole custody.”
“What?” he blurted out.
“She won’t be able to resist going back if they have to see each other, that’s why she wants the repudiation, but the alpha is counting on that.”
“Yes, but—”
“The alpha hasn’t threatened the children,” Mx Yave explained. “But she’s used them; you think she won’t do it again?”
“Why would she want to? She’s going to feel awful if they see each other again,” Uri said. No one had ever died from the first exposure, but repeatedly seeking out your bonded mate after repudiation could easily lead to a heart attack. Unless the alpha was suicidal...
“Tell me if I’m mistaken, but wouldn’t Claudette’s alpha have felt awful once they reunited after that surprise trip to Moscow?”
It was exactly what Uri had been thinking, of cour
se, but he didn’t see... “Oh, you think— you think she’ll do it again, even if it hurts her? Just to—” he stopped speaking, throat closing up. It was hard to imagine doing that to someone else, but to do it to yourself? Uriel could understand cruelty, he’d witnessed enough in his profession, but those capable of great damage to others were rarely keen on any damage to themselves.
“Yes,” Mx Yave said, sad but certain. “Yes, she will. Because control is more important than pain to her.”
“But how—?”
“Not now,” his boss interrupted. “Now we’ll go home and sleep, or at least put on a collagen mask so we don’t look like zombies come morning.”
Uri cracked a smile with a little effort, but then he met Mx Yave’s eyes and his mind seemed to clear. “Maybe my alpha brain can provide me with a solution from the depths of instinct,” he suggested, then gulped when he realised what he'd said. "I mean—"
But Yave burst out laughing. "Oh, child, so you do have something under the polite, harmless alpha façade."
Uri was relieved he hadn't given offence, but... "It's not a façade," he said quietly. He was aware Mx Yave was his boss, but he couldn't let this stand.
The hilarity cleared off Mx Yave's face. "No, of course it isn't." Uri got a respectful nod. "I meant nothing by it, just that I suspected there was more to you than meets the eye, which is not the same as a façade at all, of course."
Uri returned the nod and took his leave. "Have a good night."
HE WENT HOME ON THE tram, mind sifting through all he'd read in search of a hint, a possibility—however remote—to help the woman who'd entrusted her future to them. He wondered, because it was just the way his mind worked, if it mattered to him that she was an omega, and that it was her alpha, the person she was meant to trust above all else, who was hurting her like this. But how to tell? He understood what she must have been going through better than Mx Yave could, but his boss clearly empathized with their client and had plenty of insight into her alpha, too. Of course, power hungry manipulators weren't the exclusive province of alphas, whatever propaganda and stereotyping insisted on, and an experienced barrister like Mx Yave must have come across a fair number of controlling spouses... and worse.
Uri turned to look out the window, desperate for a distraction from the dark turn of his thoughts. His overtaxed brain took pity on him, after a whole day of alpha-omega business, a young woman kicking a ball on a giant billboard sparked the memory of Thomas's picture in uniform.
With the padding adding a few centimetres to his torso and the skates a little more than that to his height, he'd looked like a giant. It was odd but, despite their relative sizes, Uri hadn't felt like that when they'd been together; except when they’d been in the bathtub and Thomas had cradled him in his arms, all his strength around Uri like—
He swallowed, wetting his lips and checking the stop absently, more for the distraction than— "Fuck," he muttered, jumping to his feet. He'd missed it! Luckily, he could still walk home if he got off on the next one instead. He hurried to ring the bell and almost jumped out when the doors slid open for him.
He was tired and the Indian takeaway next to his flat was nice enough, so he indulged himself. But waiting there wasn't exactly a great distraction from his thoughts. He pulled out his phone and opened the messages they'd exchanged. Bland, almost business like. Nothing like the night they'd spent together. Even so, the man at the counter had to call him over twice to pick up his meal.
Once he got home, he set the Tupperware down on the kitchen table, then flopped down on his perfectly ordinary wooden chair.
Thomas had said yes, he reminded himself. And he'd teased Uri, too, which meant he'd guessed... Well, maybe not that Uri was such an idiot that he'd called to ask him out and ended up asking him to volunteer at the centre. But that Uri wanted to see him again, to... Well, to see where things between them could go, which wasn't something one asked of a one-night stand, but if Thomas had wanted to say no, he was more than able to, wasn't he? That was why Uriel always dated betas; there was no second-guessing the most important stuff with them, they either wanted to be there or they said otherwise—no secret hormonal urges forcing their hand.
He finished the food, more to avoid wasting it than because he wanted to, then forced himself through his bedtime routine. And, despite the horrors of the day, or maybe because of it, as he closed his eyes, it was Thomas’s face that came to him, his smiling eyes, his daring smirk, his face going slack with pleasure as Uri sucked him dry...
JUN HAD OVERDONE IT with the eye shadow, while Rimini had clearly poured her own nervous energy into baking what looked like the whole bakery selection of a small supermarket.
“Guys...” Uri said as he was let in.
“What?” Jun jumped.
“You need to go wash your face,” Uri said firmly.
“Told you,” Rimini said smugly.
“But—” Jun started to say and Rimini shot him a lightning fast series of signs Uri could only half-decipher. He thought it might have been a reference to a previous conversation because the only word he caught was ‘puppy’.
Not his problem, and Jun sighed and left them alone.
“And you need to put away some of this stuff,” Uri told Rimini. “There’s thirty-seven children living at the centre, not three hundred.”
Rimini glanced at her creations critically. “Yes, but I had to make variations that are gluten and nut free. So...”
“You still don’t want to give anyone a sugar comma and one of the kids is diabetic, actually, so overdoing it and leaving them a lot of leftovers wouldn’t be nice for him.”
Rimini’s face fell. But after a glance around she nodded and turned to him with a new gleam on her face. “Does anyone else have any special dietary needs?”
He’d shared meals with the kids more than once but there had never been any need for them to tell him what they could and couldn’t eat. “No idea.”
She looked less than impressed, but resigned. Before starting to work on food research, she’d spent several years at a catering agency and Uri still remembered the rants about clients who didn’t know what they wanted. “Okay, so we’ll just take three of each kind for each of them.”
“That’s a 111,” Uri pointed out. “There’s no way they should be eating that much—”
“There’s adults living there, right?” Rimini cut in, already rearranging something purple and soft looking. “And they must have fridges, I don’t have that much space over here.”
“Wait,” Uri said slowly. “You mean you made more than a hundred and eleven?”
She waved off his concerns with a shrug. “They’ll keep till I go to work on Monday and I like to bribe my students to keep attendance up.”
“I didn’t realise you had to bribe them,” Uri said sceptically.
“Well, no,” she said easily. “I’m a cutting-edge researcher into flavour infusion, but I’m also nice, that cool with you?” Her perfectly arched eyebrow could have cut someone. “Also,” she added, not waiting for his response, “Wash your hands and come help me repack this. Make sure you don’t mix the labels.”
Uri complied, he kind of liked the way Rimini treated him just like she did Jun—and everyone else, she had even a passing intimacy with, really. She knew he was an alpha but either she forgot about it most of the time or she was very determined not to make a big deal out of it.
Either way, he was desperately grateful.
Jun stepped into the kitchen. “So? Do I pass muster?”
Rimini paused to look at him, then wiggled a finger for him to approach. She used the same hand to take hold of his face and carefully fix his lip gloss with her thumb. Then she licked the remains like it was icing. Uri couldn’t see her face but he could see Jun’s Adam’s apple jump. Rimini patted him on the arm. “Relax. Uri’s got our back, and it’s just practice, remember?”
Jun leaned in until their foreheads were pressed together and Uri turned back to the cupcakes and pas
tries. He still heard Jun whisper back, “They’re all gonna want to come live with us, the pretty and the cake are a bit too much to resist.”
Rimini laughed, then made Jun come and help them finish packing.
Chapter Nine: Thomas
When he'd agreed to train the kids, more on impulse than anything else, he hadn't expected to end up looking forward to it. But after watching Keenan and Carry go from awkwardly almost ignoring each other to trying to glare each other into submission for control of the ice; teenagers seemed like a relief. At least he could be fairly hopeful they'd grow out of it—alphas and omegas were slaves to their hormones much longer.
And Uriel maybe could provide a different type of relief. He forced his mind out of the gutter and texted him that he'd arrived at the closest train station—the man had offered to walk him to the adoption centre to introduce him to the carers and director.
Of course, as soon as Uriel showed up, casually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, it was kind of hard to keep from stealing glances at him in the daylight. Thomas forgave him at once for making him wake up early on a Saturday, when even practices started later, and stepped forward for a hug before things got weird.
Uri didn't pull back, and Thomas definitely wasn't complaining about the way he shivered a little in his arms before returning the gesture. He was a little smaller than Thomas but solid and strong nonetheless—more than capable of holding him against a wall and fucking him senseless, for example—and he smelled of mint chewing gum. The oddity made him smile as they separated.
"Thanks for coming," he told Thomas, who valiantly pretended he didn't see him blushing. He hoped the kids were too young or too self-involved to notice. Not that there would be anything to object to if Uri brought his... Thomas's mind skipped when the word he went for was 'boyfriend'. It was plain stupid, why else was he here if not to see if Uri was interested in a repeat? No, not a repeat, more than a repeat. He wanted to get trapped into a loop with the guy.