Page 2 of Alpha Talk (Hemlock Wolf Pack: Life in the Happily Ever After #7)
Micah
“Sidney still isn’t sleeping with me,” Coil grunted when it was his turn to speak.
He met his true-mate three months before. Sidney was a few years older than him and focused on his medical degree. He had acknowledged their meeting but would do nothing to consummate it. At least, not in the ways that Coil felt he was entitled to. His doctor had referred him to Alpha Talk. Apparently, he went off at Sidney about not ‘giving him what he was due’ at an appointment and the doctor about tossed him out of the window. Seeing that the doctor was Clyde, Coil was lucky he didn’t end up splattered on the road. Not all of the alphas in our group were would-be predators in the making. Most of them were normal people like anyone else dealing with hard times or an unfair world.
“Coil?” Raziel cocked his eyebrow.
“Yeah?”
“How much would you pay me to solve your problem?” Raziel asked and I almost stepped in to stop the conversation.
“Wait!” my wolf yipped into my thoughts.
“Why? What’s your idea?”
“It’s not an idea, it’s a promise, pal. If you don’t shut your crow damned muzzle about Sidney not sleeping with you, I’m going to cut your balls off. You’re crossing lines that aren’t cool, dude. None of us are going to sit here and pat you on the back and say he’s some sort of horrible monster.”
“You don’t get it!” Coil snapped. “He’s mine!”
“And I’m sorry for him for that,” Raziel said. “I haven’t met the guy but I’m sure he deserves better.”
“Thought this was a supportive group?” Coil huffed in my direction.
“We are,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t let Raziel castrate you for talking about your frustrations but I would intervene if I thought you’d push the issue in the wrong way with Sidney.”
“He’d totally let me castrate you,” Raziel laughed.
I sniffed the air but nothing was given away. I knew that. In fact, it was my fault. I insisted that everyone wear pheromone blocker spray to the meetings to stop any possible fights. I wasn’t sure why Raziel was here. He was a wolf-elf by his own admission. He talked about society here and there. He wasn’t referred to us by anyone but he started showing up a few weeks after Coil did. We were open to any alpha who wanted to sit in and talk but sometimes I wondered what Raziel hid.
“Probably,” another guy nodded.
“Okay. Let’s stop the castration talk,” I glanced at the clock and stood up. We had another forty-five minutes of group left but figured it was time to send the rest of them for a run while I talked to Coil one on one. Raziel was wrong. I wouldn’t let him castrate him. I’d do whatever it took to stop Coil from turning into a monster myself.
“What’s this?” Coil asked once the others had left. “I’m being kept after class? Like a school kid?”
“No, not like a school kid, Coil,” I shook my head. “You’re not a kid. You’re a university student and an adult. Being an adult sucks. Sometimes it means making hard choices but respecting your mate’s boundaries shouldn’t be one of them.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, tossing his hands in the air and looking a lot younger than he actually was.
Shifters didn’t age like mortals of old but if we had wisdom to show from age it usually showed behind our eyes. Coil hadn’t reached any level of wisdom I could discern there.
“Explain it to me because what I’m hearing is Sidney owes you sex and that’s not true.”
“He picked me, though! Out of all the men in the Other World he picked me, Micah,” he groaned.
“Yeah, he did and you picked him too.”
“I’ve done the therapy. I’ve done the wooing! I just want to get fucking laid!” he growled.
I fought off the urge to rub the bridge of my nose and ask him what happened that his hands magically stopped working when he met his mate. Sure, Cody and I hadn’t waited long but if we had met under different circumstances, I liked to think we would’ve had a courtship.
“The end all be all of relationships isn’t sex and penetration isn’t the end all be all of sex,” I told him. “I understand you’re frustrated. I understand that you’re feeling rejected but…”
“Exactly!” he shouted over what I attempted to tell him.
“What’s Sidney feeling about it all and would you be okay if anyone else made him feel that way?” I asked Coil.
“No but ---”
“But what?” I asked, the urge to square up to him tickling the back of my neck.
My wolf could totally take this guy. Hell, I could’ve taken him with my prosthetic locked up in a vault. He was a pup. A horny, hormonal pup who was going to cause a lot of damage if he didn’t check himself. Where did this entitlement come from?
“He’s mine. He’s my other half. He should want me.”
“And he probably does. He wants you but he doesn’t want to have a baby yet and that’s fair. You have options. You stick to non-penetration or get a vasectomy. If those don’t work, let him top you.”
Coil’s face turned red. Sometimes you had to embarrass some of these guys to get them to pay attention.
“If you want to get laid and you want your claiming vows that last one works and no one gets pregnant,” I shrugged, tucking my hands into my coat pockets. “Seriously, think about it and if it’s a no from the get go think about how Sidney would respond to that. How you’d hope he’d respond to a boundary.”
He took a few steps closer to me and my wolf stood up inside his inner sanctum. I didn’t want to fight Coil. Fighting with the guys from Alpha Talk defeated the purpose of keeping them from violence but sometimes shit happened. He leaned in close and took a deep breath.
“Are you going to kiss me, Coil?” I laughed, trying to break the tension.
“No, I need to ask you a question and I don’t want everyone else to hear me,” he whispered.
“No, you can’t have a kiss,” I teased him but didn’t like people I didn’t know that well getting close to my face. It was too much like waking up tied to a bed and getting kissed by Creon. Sure, I did my best not to hold it against him anymore, but PTSD was a bitch.
“Is that allowed?” he asked.
“What? Him topping you?” I asked, not bothering to lower my voice because the other alphas didn’t bother to stick around to eavesdrop on Coil. They heard most of what he had to say in group over the last few months. They all knew he was horny and not getting what he insisted was his birthright.
“Yeah,” Coil nodded and glanced around.
“Coil, you’re a grown up. You can ask sex questions. You can within sanity, consent, and want to do just about whatever you want in the bedroom as long as your partner is down for it.”
“I mean, does it even work?”
“Yes, Coil. Betas and alphas have bottomed probably since the dawn of time. Historically, everyone was as horny as you are. They expressed that in different ways but talk to Sidney and buy some lube. If that fixes the problem for now, you can thank me by not turning into some cave-alpha dragging your mate around by the scruff.”
“I’d never--- I wouldn’t make him do anything,” Coil crossed his arms.
“Begging and trying to wear someone down for a yes is making them, Coil. Just keep that in mind, friend, and keep going to couples’ therapy. I think you still need it.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes as he headed outside. It wasn’t the best one on one that I had with one of the alphas from the support groups but I prayed to Frost and the Crow King that Coil took what I said to heart. Everyone thought having a true-mate was easy and sometimes it was. Loving them was usually easy because you loved them before you ever met them. Making the relationship work took time, effort, and compromise. Not every omega wanted a thousand kids. Not every alpha wanted to start a family straight away. I hated that the path to ‘true-mate’ happiness was presented as something written in stone.
1) Meet true-mate in some epic way. During a battle is the best but any high stress time will do.
2) Fuck as soon as possible. It’s even better if it’s inconvenient for everyone else in your life. This is what it’s all about anyway. Make sure you get your claiming vows and bite them hard to show you’re in charge. If you don’t conceive a baby the first time, you’re probably a failure.
3) Keep having kids until your brain and your house explode.
4) Have more kids.
5) Keep having kids until your door shows up. Never stop. Never breathe and if one of you ever makes a mistake in your relationship it’s the end of the world because you’re prefect for each other with no work needed.
“Alpha?” Cody popped into my thoughts. We didn’t use our mating link a lot during working hours and I usually kept my side of things closed off when I was in a session of any caliber.
“Everything okay, babe?” I asked, glancing around the room before grabbing the broom to sweep. I hated leaving any of the group rooms even slightly untidy. If you let one thing slip on Monday by Friday the whole place looked like a frat house. We had cleaners come in every Sunday morning, but I would hate for them to think we were all pigs.
“Yeah. You just… You went tense there for a minute. Don’t worry. I didn’t hear anything. I just felt you.”
“Coil got a bit close. Thought he wanted to fight but he wanted to ask weird teenager questions,” I chuckled. “This is one I wish I could tell you because you’d laugh. Though, it makes me want to write Wrynn Heart-Hemlock and ask him if he includes some stuff in his Omega Studies curriculum. They use that shit here too. So, either he doesn’t, or Coil slept through that class.”
“Probably the latter,” Cody chuckled. “Want me to come help clean up?”
“If you haven’t eaten yet you can meet me here and we’ll swing by that new little pizza place on Cro---”
“Okay,” Cody said, almost too quick.
“You’ve eaten already, haven’t you?”
“I’m still hungry, though,” he said, and I could almost see him biting his lip.
The broom clashed to the floor, and I almost fell over a chair on my sprint to the door. Cody had struggled to find an appetite for as long as I knew him unless he was pregnant. Some days were better than others but growing up where he had shaped his views on food in ways I’d never fully understand.
“Are you running?” Cody asked over our mating link.
“To you.”
“Stop and get pizza?” he asked, his tone raising an octave.
“Anything for you,” I told him for the millionth time since we met, and I still meant it.