by N. J. Lysk
“But you can’t let him—”
“And you can?” he demanded, turning furious eyes on me. “You’re just going to take this?”
“He...” I shrugged. “He already...”
“He hasn’t bitten you,” my twin objected, a little calmer. “That means you’re not his omega yet, you’re just... They’re your cubs too,” he said firmly. “And... do you think he will really look after them?”
I blinked, heart speeding up. “They are his cubs,” I reminded Zybyn.
“Like I was supposed to be his omega?” he asked me. “What if one of your cubs is not what he wants in a child? Will he toss them out? Sell them to any passing stranger on the road?”
My fingers tightened on him, hard enough I smelt blood. Zybyn didn’t budge. “Zybyn, I...” I shook my head.
“We can’t let this happen to your cubs,” he insisted. “You have to protect them.”
It was an omega’s most basic instinct, it was true. “How?” I said in a whisper.
“What would you do if a bear was going to eat them?” Zybyn asked and let it sit there in the air between us.
It was a question that did not require an answer, naturally.
Chapter 4
We had to act normal, and that night normal was eating the goat Xander had got for us and then curling up to sleep on the furs in one corner together. One of the very few of Xander’s preferences that coincided with our own was that he did not like anyone touching him while he slept.
The next morning, normal was spreading my legs for him and washing the come stained furs before breakfast. It was Zybyn’s job to clean the animals our mighty alpha brought back for us so we could sear the meat a bit in the fire—eating raw meat in human form was a bad idea, since we had neither the teeth nor the right stomachs to process it.
I thought about it, what Zybyn had said; about me, and him... and the babies. The notion of an alpha hurting his own children was— Well, taboo. But the way he treated me, the way he’d tricked us into coming here. The way he had forced me, the way he had forced Zybyn... Originally, my brother had agreed to mating him, but not... not like that. I didn’t care what the rules said, I’d seen Zybyn’s face when it’d happened and it hadn’t been right, and even though I had been high in the grasps of heat, it hadn’t felt right when it’d been me either. And certainly not the next morning when my mind had cleared.
It was hard to argue that a man who didn’t care if his partner enjoyed sex or whether he wanted sex at all wouldn’t do terrible things. And he had, in fact, just done something even worse.
When he’d returned to the cave at last, we’d seen the stash of new things in the corner of the cave he’d chosen for himself. It was just some clothes, and a bottle of tequila, strong enough to affect even a shifter. That was all, what he’d traded our bodies and our trust for: a relaxing drink and a fresh shirt.
So I thought about it, about getting away, about getting Zybyn away before Xander’s promises became acts and he did to my twin what he had already done to me.
A COUPLE NIGHTS LATER I was lying in the dark, eyes open following the half-seen half-imagined edge of the cave ceiling when Zybyn shifted next to me and I felt his hand on mine. Right on top of where I was resting it on my belly. In this position, it felt no different, but I could still tell. It hadn’t been a month yet, and there were no heartbeats, no... But I knew.
I turned my head towards my twin. His eyes were full of love, but there was sadness too, a depth to it you could drown in if you weren’t careful. And Zybyn wasn’t trying to hide it; he was showing me all his pain and need. He knew, of course, that he could trust me to get him out of this situation at any cost. That if it had been him with a rapist’s children in his belly, I would have done anything.
It wasn’t him, but I understood very well that he couldn’t allow it to be me any more than I could have. I had to help, or he’d try on his own.
I gave him a sharp nod, and his eyes widened, nose flaring and then, getting himself under control, he buried his face against my neck and clung to me, shaking a little. Until I brought him close to me, anchored him against the storm inside with the silent promise of my presence, though I knew it would cost me everything to follow through.
But if there was one person in the world that I could promise my everything to, it was the other half of my soul.
AFTER THOSE FIRST FEW days when he’d made Zybyn stay in the cave with him—and my twin had sworn on our mother’s heart that nothing had happened those times—Xander had started sending us both out to wash ourselves and brush our few furs every morning. That way we’d have time to spread them out under the high morning sun where any remaining moisture from our bodies and the ground could dry up. Breakfast was always some leftover meat and any fresh fruit we’d scavenged from around the cave—some of those berries were probably slightly poisonous, but we needed something other than meat and our systems could take a slight stomach ache.
“We cannot let him speak,” Zybyn said that day in the river, and I nodded. “So either we go in really fast so he cannot stop us...”
“From the back,” I said, feeling like my veins were full of ice despite the rather sunny day.
Zybyn was staring at me. Shocked, horrified at my dishonourable suggestion.
“Come off it,” I told him. “This isn’t a duel or a fair fight, he wouldn’t let us fight fairly. He doesn’t even think we can hunt!”
“I think he just wants us to feel helpless,” Zybyn whispered, hands on the fur he’d been beating against the rocks moments before.
I growled, exasperated. Did this alpha really think we had forgotten both our instincts and our whole lives? We’d been hunting around our own mountain—much less fertile and therefore much poorer in fauna too—since we’d been able to run without stumbling over our own feet.
“Zybyn?” I demanded.
He exhaled and gave me a nod in response, dark eyes on mine. “You’re right,” he admitted and he sounded so miffed about it, like I’d figured out a game or a secret before he’d managed, like we were back home and we were free. That’s why the laughter started and it was only halfway through that it turned to tears, wrecking my body as I curled forward, only held away from the edge of the water by my twin’s strong arms around me.
“Hey,” he whispered in my left ear from behind, and I didn’t think it was the first time he’d said it, but it was the first time I could hear it. “Shuffle back a little, you don’t need another bath.”
I let him pull me backwards and then I rolled over to bury my face into his neck, claws digging into his arms too hard. He didn’t complain, just held me back and rocked us both a little from side to side, humming something I thought was a lullaby. Fuck, I had no idea how to be a parent, I realised, but I couldn’t put that terror into words, not with everything else that was twisting inside me. It just came out as tears that shook me in his hold, all I had left in the world, but enough. Enough that the tears stopped eventually and I breathed in his familiar scent, trying to convince my body I was safe when I knew in my mind it could all be snatched from me at any moment.
“I can’t take this much longer,” I told him once I could speak again, my cheek pressed to the steady beating of his heart, his arms around my back securing me in place against him.
“You won’t have to,” he said at once with the kind of certainty that I’d learned to trust early. Zybyn never lied and he seemed to have unlimited reserves of both imagination and willpower.
Of course, neither of those had helped him when it came to Xander so far, but then again... I’d been more than useless. Maybe if we put our minds to it like we used to, we could do something. I rubbed his back encouragingly.
He squeezed me tight once more. “I have some ideas about how... how to end this.” He leaned back a little to meet my eyes. “I love you more than anything, remember that.”
“I love you too,” I said at once, following his lead as he got to his feet and walked me back to get t
he furs from where we’d been beating them clean and extend them over higher rocks, a smaller rock on top to prevent them from flying off.
We had our own rock to shift, all that remained was the technique.
THERE WERE NO GOOD options. Even before presenting as omegas, Zybyn and I had not indulged in pointless violence. We hunted, of course, and we’d fight defensively but we did that together for the most part and the experience of being surrounded tended to get most shifters overwhelmed enough to fuck off. We’d much preferred coming up with tricks to make mountain goats come our way than running after them for half an hour anyway. When you have to work hard each day just to have enough to eat for you and your family, there isn’t much time for silly amusements, but using our ingenuity for hunting had been both practical and satisfying.
Our attitude towards violence was no accident, we weren’t really suited to it. And in a pack as desperate as ours for resources, we’d been brought up to believe defence was the only good reason to attack. It was just common sense, up in the mountains all we had were other members of our pack and if we couldn’t trust each other to have our backs...
Any violence was dangerous because it would engender more violence, and in-fighting would drain the energy you needed to survive. It’d worked for us, and it’d always felt true, but nobody had bothered to talk us through all the possible monsters hiding in the world. All the scenarios we’d been presented with had been straightforward, someone in danger right in front of our eyes, someone trying to kill somebody else.
Had no one thought of what torture it could be to be left to live a life so empty? To be made into something empty? A vessel for an alpha to fill? A warm body to fuck, and later for cubs to live in, and later for them to feed from.
I’d much rather have been dead even if it hadn’t included watching Zybyn go through the same things.
Death would only hurt for a moment, not extend through the years, slowly poisoning me until not just my body but my very soul were rotten.
Xander was going to die, I knew with certainty as he fucked me that night.
The only question was how.
ZYBYN HAD SOME IDEAS, but in the end the answer came to me. “He won’t let you get that close,” I told my twin. “But I can...” I exhaled, pushing away a wave of nausea. “I can do it, while he’s fucking me.” I forced the words out, refusing to be ashamed of something I couldn’t control, reminding myself of why I was doing... of who I needed to do this for.
“You want to...?” Zybyn’s eyes were full of pain. He gestured with his fingers bent like claws.
“No,” I said, the truth coming to me. “I need more force.”
For a moment, my brother clearly didn’t understand, then his eyes widened as he inhaled raggedly. “Michuá...” My name was a plea, a cry for mercy to a world that wouldn’t listen.
“It’s the only way,” I said, gritting my teeth to bear his pain as well as my own.
IT WAS TRUE, AND WE both knew it. It was also cold-blooded murder, no matter how sure I was that it was necessary, how convinced I was that I couldn’t survive this life for long—my body would, but my mind would shatter into a thousand pieces.
And if anything happened to Zybyn...
I could feel my twin’s attention on me, but other than the worried look in his eyes, that was all the indication I got that he was thinking of our ‘plan’. Maybe, I thought that night as I braced my elbows on the hard ground to keep myself in place for the alpha’s cock to stab into me with all his might. Each thrust made my belly bounce, more noticeable in this position than on the normal course of most other activities, which Xander had made clear wasn’t accidental by rubbing at it with possessive pleasure earlier in the proceedings.
Now he’d clearly got distracted by the old incentive of getting off in my wet hole.
But it wasn’t that he always kept me facing away, and I’d be lying if I said there’s some omega instinct that kept me from it. The truth is that I was just afraid, afraid enough that even a darker future couldn’t sway me, couldn’t make me do the right thing.
It’s funny to think about it like that, the right thing. But it was. I had known the moment Zybyn had told me about Xander’s plans for him, and I knew that from a practical point of view it had to be me.
It was the right thing to do, and I couldn’t fucking do it. I thought about it the next time Xander decided to fuck me face to face, about reaching out and extending my claws to their fullest until they would go in easy into the skin of his neck, past muscle and into tendon. He’d scream, but all I had to do was hold on and yank him down to my teeth, sharp enough even if I didn’t transform at all. I just needed to keep him from talking and then... once my mouth was full of his blood, I just had to hold on. Hold on until it was over, hold on even though he would still be inside me. Would always be inside me, because...
I shuddered and he grunted over me and I let it happen again, even knowing he could hurt Zybyn again. He most certainly would given the chance, or even on a whim. And he could hurt my cubs, they were his too but that wouldn’t matter. He had me, but that didn’t mean he cared about me. Not even as much as he cared for objects he owned—I’d seen him carefully stash his clothes and ration the alcohol. But me... Well, I was an inexhaustible resource, wasn’t I? He’d take and take and take, and never give anything back.
Not unless I took it.
Chapter 5
It was Zybyn in the end, of course it was. My brave beautiful brother, the one everyone thought of as the shy one, the quiet twin, the kind half to my mischievous self. Not that most of our pack could keep track of us that well, there was no time for haircuts or even clothes that were anything beyond the practical, and in truth... Why should we make an effort to set ourselves apart for people who couldn’t be bothered to figure us out? I’d never minded if people called me by his name, and we kept no secrets from each other so who cared if someone was angry for something he’d done and threw the punch at me?
If there was ever a time when we’d look different—and most certainly smell it—it was now. When I was filling out with... hormones, and he was losing weight with our scarce diet and lack of exercise, and the worry and the pain. But his body somehow came around to its business in the end.
I think I was the first one to notice that the way he had been napping all day wasn’t simply boredom or exhaustion. I frowned and buried my nose in his neck, sniffing, and had my worse suspicions confirmed. His heat was rising again.
I pulled him close, wondering how to disguise his scent from the alpha. Xander normally didn’t pay much attention to Zybyn unless he wanted him to do something, but he’d be coming back with some prey soon. Even if I offered to clean it and cook it instead, there was no way an alpha could miss the sticky sweetness of heat. Not in a fucking cave.
“Zybyn.” I shook him and he groaned, trying to curl up away from me, but I insisted. “Wake up, you need to wake up... You— your heat is coming.”
That made him blink his eyes open. “Mmm?”
“Heat,” I repeated.
And he shook his head. “Ugh, pregnant.”
I almost laughed, which was to say I almost started to cry. “Not me, you.”
Had he forgotten? Well, if he had forgotten that first time, I could only be grateful, it was seared in my mind. The worst thing I had ever witnessed. Worse than the time in the riverbank with the strange alpha because back then I had still believed Xander meant it when he’d said he’d honour his mate.
I couldn’t see it again; I couldn’t let it happen again. “You have to get out,” I told him. “He’ll be back soon and—”
Zybyn’s claws dug into my wrist and I realised he’d been trying to speak. He swallowed with some difficulty. He wasn’t too far gone but his cheeks were flushed, his pupils huge. “Opportunity,” he got out. “I can— I can do it.” He was panting a little by the end.
“What? You want to...” I glanced towards the door. “Zybyn, you can’t, you’re in heat, you—”
“It’s not that bad,” he insisted. “It’s not— I can do it.”
His other hand rose until it reached the side of my neck. “Can do it. You... I can keep you safe, Michuá.”
Keep me safe, like it was somehow his responsibility.
I could insist that I would have refused him, sent him away, played up all my tricks to keep Xander from following.
But what ifs don’t matter. I’d been too focused on Zybyn to hear the alpha approaching, but his delighted laugh as he crossed the threshold was impossible to miss, like my blood freezing over.
“What’s this?” he boomed, dropping whatever poor animal had crossed his path today on the ground without a second look. “Not so frigid after all, my little omega bitch?” he asked Zybyn.
My grip on my brother’s side tightened and I could barely control the impulse of curling up around him to block him from my alpha’s view. If I reminded Xander that Zybyn’s heats rose slowly, he’d... he’d wait until my brother was out of his mind and begging for it. He’d wait until it was too late.
Zybyn squirmed against me, moaning brokenly. I glanced down at him, startled. Was the presence of an alpha affecting him that much or was he faking it...?
“Get out of the way,” Xander told me, eyes fixed on my twin. Perhaps out of consideration for my state, he gave me enough time to roll away.
It felt like tearing myself in two, leaving my weaker half exposed, my whole self calling out to Zybyn, body and soul.
Zybyn reached out for Xander at once, dragging him down on top of him in a way I thought for sure would get him reprimanded, but the alpha growled and kissed him full on the mouth, rubbing himself all over my twin and pushing up his tunic to expose his bottom half. He didn’t seem concerned with the proper behaviour of omegas he’d insisted so much on with me. But then again, if anyone could resist having Zybyn arching under them sucking on their tongue and doing his best to meld their hips together...