A New Millennium's Omega

by Marilyn Black

  "In a manner." I looked towards him and said, "I'll be downstairs in a second."

  "It's not that we need you downstairs," he added with a hint of concern. "There's someone banging pots outside, screaming that twink's name."

  Immediately, I got up and walked towards the window. Sure enough, there was an SUV parked out in the front driveway, and a man with a frosted-tipped mullet was indeed standing in front of the fountain— in one hand was a silver pot while, in the other one, was a metallic ladle.

  I could hear him through the window, screaming, "Get. Out. Here. I know you're there. You'd better not be in that man. I marked you. I marked you! Me!"

  I looked at Stuart. "Who is this guy?"

  He came to the window and said, "Oh no. It's Jack."

  "Jack?"

  He sighed. "Last night, I..." He threw down his hands. "I went to a main street bar, and I met this guy. He's one of the Grover wolves, and I thought that he might be a little fun."

  I looked back out. My fucking god, why did he have a mullet that was literally frosted tips? It was ugly to the extreme, and I couldn't believe a person actually thought this was acceptable! It looked like he was an alien, with dark black hair and icy silver tips. And he was wearing a black shirt with a fiery red, orange, and yellow design. Oh my god, it was getting worse! He was wearing JNCO jeans!

  Jack kept banging the pot, and then began walking back and forth, pacing across the entirety of the lot. I wanted to reach out the window and shake my fist at him for making such a ruckus, but I had a dark feeling about him, that perhaps he was saying something incredibly fucked up earlier when he called Stuart 'His.'

  However, as I was naked and still very musky, I decided to head into the bathroom and threw on a robe. Then I saw myself in the mirror and thought I looked so odd out of my suit.

  Then I left, meeting up with the two movers. "When did he get here?"

  "Not more five minutes ago."

  "That wasn't long, but I haven't been here that long either."

  "What do you mean, man? You must've been knotting with that twink for at least half an hour."

  I pressed my hand against my forehead and groaned. "God, it was that long? It felt like five minutes to me."

  Jay said, "He came in riding on the roof, so he's with someone else. I don't think it's a good idea to go out there."

  "I'm just gonna see him up close. Size him up. These types get real flighty when you confront them."

  Stuart ran up to me, his arms folded. I used the opportunity to ask, "You said he's from the Grover family, right?"

  "Yeah. Jackie Grover. He wasn't even very fun and didn't do anything."

  Already, I felt a bit uncomfortable hearing of Stuart's exploits with the man outside, but I couldn't hold it against him. After all, I had run off abruptly before we could hit it off. It was Jack that was making me uncomfortable the most because it just seemed so weird to go out and try harassing someone at their home when you aren't in an actual relationship. This was what you did if you were being cheated on.

  Wait, I thought. "You met him last night? You didn't do anything more than that?"

  He replied at a good pace, saying, "Nope. I thought he looked nice, but he was pretty disappointing all around." You know how sometimes you just KNOW someone's telling the truth? If you've never been in that situation or haven't been in it for a long time, it's hard to understand, but it was the presentation and intonation in Stuart's voice that proved it. He wasn't panicking or responding with indignation, and he wasn't defending himself either. I asked a question, and he answered.

  This made me even more indignant about Jack.

  I went to the front porch, taking care to stay in the door frame. You never knew with these drunk-asses what they were going to do.

  "What do you want?" I shouted.

  He stopped banging his pot, threw everything to the ground, and let his JNCO jeans flutter behind him as he stormed over. "Who is this? STU! Stuart, get out of here! I thought I told you I was gonna have that ass! Remember!"

  He tried pushing past me, but I kept him back. "What the hell are you doing? This is private property."

  "I don't give a damn. I marked an Omega boy. He's in there. Where is he? He's coming home with me."

  "He didn't say anything about you this whole time."

  "Oh, so he's a fuckin' slut too? Stu! I'm warnin' you!"

  I put a lot of force into a push, sending him off the steps. "You don't warn someone, you son of a bitch. You better step back."

  I looked back inside and saw Stuart's face, all clammy as if he was suddenly concerned for his own life. I wasn't blaming him for feeling threatened— this jackass didn't understand basic social interaction well enough to know when to take a hint, and it was painful to be patient with him.

  He tried pushing past me again and shouted, "I thought we had something, man! You better give me my money back!"

  "Money? You're trying to get a quick one on me?" Again, I pushed him back. "You better turn yourself around and find the bus, man. I'm not playing around."

  He balled his hands and shouted at one of the second-story windows, "You little bitch. You're just like Tommy! Another little molly slut!" Then he stormed back to his SUV and threw himself into the back. For a second, I saw the face of the driver, someone whom I recognized: it was Jesse Grover, a famous computer wizard & Beta wolf I had worked with a few years prior, a man who had developed hacking skills back in the late 1980s that made him perhaps one of the most dangerous men alive. However, he didn't focus on me, and instead looked to Jack. I saw him assaulting a seat as they turned around and drove off.

  Part of me felt bad that a man as talented as Jesse had gotten tangled up with a guy like Jack, who I immediately realized must've been his brother.

  Then I immediately turned back and grasped Stuart, whose own arms were open and inviting. He pulled me towards him.

  I said, "Omegas aren't supposed to pull their Alphas. It's the other way around!"

  But he didn't respond and instead was trembling. I set him away from me and looked at his skin. His arms were covered in goosebumps, and the hair was sticking straight up. If he was shifted, his tail would've been between his legs and wrapped around one of his ankles. When I saw this, I pulled him closer again. "Come here..."

  He sniffled and said, "He said something about Tommy!" I let his head snuggle into my breast and looked past him towards the back door. "What did he want to do?"

  "I don't know, man. I don't know..." I pet his head, stroking him gently. "We'll go talk to them later."

  Eric and Jay ran up to me, and Jay said, "You want us to follow them before they get away?"

  Eric pointed to the car still in the driveway, taking its sweet time pulling out.

  "Yeah, go ahead. Make sure you get their license plate." I pat my robe, and then realized my keys were still in my pants. "Shit... My keys are in the bathroom upstairs."

  Eric climbed into the truck and said, "I'll just use this. Be right back, man."

  Quickly, he turned on the engine and pulled out, catching up to the SUV before it could've made any quick motions away.

  Jay said, "Who even was that?"

  I shook my head and pulled Stuart in closer.

  Stuart

  Oh my fucking god, that was some shit right there. I couldn't bring myself to watch them drive off because I was too freaked out by what had happened and didn't want to turn my head up and see Jack come driving back towards me.

  Instead, I kept my face in Frederick's chest for a while longer. Sniffing his scent was very calming and should've been super sensual, but my heart was moving so much blood that my little head was probably about to come off. It sure felt like it because my face was super hot— and not just from that heat inside me earlier. It was a harsh, bloody heat that made me scared to look out any window.

  Why did Jack scare me so much? You should've seen his face. He looked like a rabid dog, snarling and roaring my name. That wasn't the face of a man who wa
nted to sing love songs.

  It was his mention of Tommy that scared me the most. Tommy had been involved with one of the Grovers after all.

  It was time that he told us exactly what was happening.

  Once I had stopped shaking, I sat half-naked in a chair, the corduroy very cold on my bum skin. It wasn't the sexiest moment of my life by some distance. We had to get dressed. Eric brought back the truck and told Frederick that the license plate was for Oregon and meant they were probably local.

  Hearing that made sense. Jack met me at a hot sex club called [rainbow] (yes, it has the pretentious brackets), so unless he drove down from somewhere just to meet me in particular, I assumed he was from here.

  After Frederick got into a new suit and desperate to get Jack off my mind, I looked into his closet and said, "Oh wow! Do you just wear suits?"

  He fastened his tie and said, "My father told me something that stuck with me over the years: it takes years to build reputation and only a second to destroy it. Don't start off with your reputation already destroyed."

  "But why the suit?"

  "People respond well to suits. Who knows, I might take you to get one if you want."

  I waved my hand. "I'm not that much of a classy bitch," and laughed. It felt good to laugh, like it was something I had to do.

  He laughed with me. "Well, suit yourself."

  "I'm gonna..." I ran my hands down my face. "I'm gonna be real with you for a moment. Do you think you should've moved here?"

  After finally fixing his tie to be perfectly aligned with his buttons, he said, "Absolutely. That's something else my father told me. We all have two days in our lives more important than any other: when we're born and when we discover why."

  I heard that saying before, but hearing it out of his mouth made it sound so incredibly epic like he had just spoken of some ancient wisdom.

  Then I ran my hand over my stomach. "You think I'll get pregnant?"

  "Absolutely," he said without a beat. "You were hot earlier— very hot. That's because you're literally in heat, and your body's working overtime in its estrus. And we both can feel it. There's something building within us."

  "How is it even possible that, in the world, we could have only one person we're meant for? And how crazy is it that those two people could live next to each other?"

  "I don't question these sorts of things, especially if it works well enough. Now... I have a lot of spare clothes. You need something?"

  He stepped out from in front of his wardrobe, showing me that it was basically the size of a house by itself.

  "Why do you need so many clothes?"

  "I don't," he said. "I keep all these clothes in case someone else needs them."

  "But that's so unlikely!"

  He snickered and caught a peal of laughter. "You think that would be the case, but you'd be surprised. In my old house, I used to have a real nasty case where random people would need clothes for whatever reason, so I made sure to keep my wardrobe well-stocked."

  I checked through the drawers and hangers, marveling at all the perfectly pressed and folded clothing and noticing that a lot of it was still too big for me. The stuff that Frederick was wearing would've made me feel like a literal child, but even his smaller fare hanged off my body.

  "I don't take up much space," I told him. "You got anything good for me?"

  "Well, there are some things in the back..." He pointed towards what I thought was the literal children's section, and when I went through the first hangers of them, they were definitely for little kids, and some were for older kids.

  "Why kids' clothing?"

  "When I said that a lot of people would ask for clothes," he said, "I do mean a lot. In a lot of cases, it was entire families. They were poor and would need to literally count pennies just to afford things." He looked to the ceiling with his finger on his chin. "There was this one clan who were from Yugoslavia and immigrated to Seattle. I guess it's not Yugoslavia anymore, though. And it was only girls, too. The mom had eyes that looked so broken, and I didn't want to imagine what she went through. And she talked about how she used to have a loving husband, an Alpha dragon from Sarajevo, as well as two teenaged sons. And then they... Well... They lived in Srebrenica and... and when they found out a Bosniak had mated with a Serb, they took her and her daughters, her dear daughters, to some place called Karaman's House. And… she hasn’t heard from her husband or sons in years."

  I didn't follow the news much—or at all— but I didn't want to imagine what he was trying to get at. The way his voice moved also filled me with dread.

  "I didn't even have enough clothes for them at the time, and I still feel like I took a gunshot to the chest for not giving them anything. I still gave them money, but I was too concerned they'd be scammed out of it."

  "I see..." I found a good glammy jacket that reminded me of the silvery purple ones Prince wore, complete with some cute skinny pants in the same color. It was totally goofy to the max, but I saw he had them, and it was 1999 after all, so when else would I be able to wear them shamelessly? The haters could deal.

  Finally, we rolled out, and I got to sit front row in a Rolls Royce. It was the swankiest car I'd ever been in by far, so high class that I felt unworthy just to sit in there. Like I was a peasant traveling in an aristocrat's wagon with the aristocrat still in it, talking to me, trying to snuggle with me while I kept trying to snuggle with him. Except he had to drive, so no snuggling right now, unfortunately! Ah, but it was the thought that counted to me. Being in his presence was like being warmed by the sun, something that was very necessary on a day like that day.

  It wasn't super cold, but it was too chilly for me to go out in a jacket that thin, and as soon as I felt the air on my skin through the clothes, I realized I hadn't worn enough.

  "You said you donated a lot to Goodwill and charity, right?"

  "Yes, sir. It's part of our code as Unicorns to always help the needy. Maybe it's a biological drive."

  Hearing him say that made him that much hotter in my eyes like he was some sort of billionaire superhero. I didn't know how wealthy he actually was, but if he was living in a big mansion like that, had multiple high-end cars, and could afford a super-powerful computer like it ain't no thing, he had to be loaded.

  "Why don't you have a limo?" I asked.

  "I never saw the need." He gripped the steering wheel tighter. I wondered if it was some Alpha thing. They liked to be in control, even if it came at the expense of their own luxury. Or maybe I was overthinking it. When I thought about it, having a limo seemed excessive a lot of the time, though not having to drive did sound good.

  He said, "I do have one thing I want to ask. Last night, when you met with Jack."

  "Y-yeah?"

  "What happened?"

  I had both hands on my face and looked at my lap through my fingers. "I mean, I tried to swing towards him. You looked real cute, but you ran off, and I came down here to have fun. So I thought that maybe I'd go to [rainbow] and see if I could lay with someone fun. Just because... you know..." I had given him a bit of a shaft job, after all, so he knew what I was winking nat. "Jack was there, looking for some Omegas. He saw me and called me over, and I thought he was going to be a fun little distraction."

  "You weren't worried about getting pregnant?"

  I pat my chest repeatedly, but I wasn't wearing those clothes anymore. "I had protection."

  "Did he?"

  "Yeah... Well, he said he did. If he didn't, I'd probably have gotten out of there. But then again, maybe he wouldn't have gotten me pregnant anyway. He wasn't my soul mate."

  Morosely he said, "It's always possible I didn't get you pregnant either."

  I didn't know how to take that sort of talk because pregnancy was a really strange topic. Most Omegas eventually got knocked up and made a baby or two, but I didn't think that this would be my time. Sure, I woke up hoping dearly that Frederick and I would get hot in the sheets, but pregnancy? It scared me a bit. I always heard of how p
ainful it was, as if all your bones were being squeezed to the breaking point, and all of that pain was compressed in your lower chest and groin. Women had it hard because they had to give birth through their vulvas, but Omegas got C-sections to get around it. That wasn't particularly exciting to think of either because I'd be cut open to squeeze a little person out of me. Just thinking of it made me squirm. But hey, humanity survived this long with it, so it wasn't going to kill me... hopefully.

  Finally, we arrived at Steamy Cups. The first thing I saw was Tommy looking out the window.

  The doorbell jingled as we walked in, and Tommy ran to me and hugged me, and we swung around.

  Neil shouted to Frederick, "Y'ello, man! You're back!"

  Scott also waved. "Hey, Fred! That didn't take long!"

  He didn't even waste time. "Hello again. We've gotta have a talk." Then he walked to Tommy, pulled up a chair, and said, "Tommy, is it?"

  Tommy looked to him and scowled. "Yes? Oh, you're the new guy Stuart's into."

  I felt worried because Tommy was still upset about Frederick living in the house of that old Grover guy. But since he never told anyone what had happened, I didn't know how offended I ought to have been about this.

  Frederick said, "I apologize in advance if this brings up any old wounds. But I need you— we need you— to tell us what happened with the man who lived in the mansion I'm now in."

  For a brief moment, Tommy looked like he was going to explode. I wanted to rush to his side to calm him down, but also to Frederick's side to protect him.

  "Okay."

  I stopped and felt my chest thump. "Wait, what?"

  "Fine," he said. "If you want to hear it, then fine."

  "But why didn't you tell any of us before now?"

  Frederick pat my heat. "It's fine. Let it go. We have to take whatever we can get."

  Tommy's brow looked like it was a snake. "Wh-why? What's going on?"

  Neil and Scott were in the back, looking awkward as all Hell.

  Frederick said, "There's a guy, Jack Grover. He tried harassing us earlier. And he knew where we lived."