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It was something I’d suspected when we first met ten years ago, but before I could realize it, I was dragged back off into the burrows my family lived in, they were surprised I lived, and while I didn’t tell any of them I was saved by an omega, I did come out of it with what I called war wounds. I knew what my family appreciated, and they appreciated any show of dominance and power, as an Alpha should display.

Soren cut through all the toxins the venom had over me. One of the family traditions was to drink the blood of family, to keep our genetics strong. It was something I thought was the law. The alternative being death because every other species was impure. Soren taught me that wasn’t the case, and it only took me ten years to realize it.

Snapping his fingers in my face, he stood over me, threatening to bind my arms to the bed in the same way I’d bound him there earlier. “I’m not immune to venom. If I was, I’m pretty sure I’d know about it. And no, before you get your rocks off on it, I’m not going to let your skeezy fangs penetrate me.”

Memories were flooding my mind. They’d slowly pierced the veil when I was face-to-face with him again, but this was very different now. The last time I felt in control of myself was when I was with him in that comfortable bed, having my wounds treated. It was strange to consider that my last time this lucid, but I could see now that he’d seen how different I was.

“Are you mute, all of a sudden?” he asked. “Is that something else I’m capable of making you?” He smirked. “Come on. We need to plan a way out, a way of getting all the omegas out. And I’m sure there’s more omegas than my list. So, before you think about only getting a small amount to safety, think again.”

I grabbed his arm and pulled his wrist to my mouth. He tried to yank it free, but I used whatever strength I had left to keep him there. “I just need to smell you.” It was the reason I didn’t want anyone finding him, the reason I couldn’t handle the idea of him being used as one of the omegas. He was his own kind of venom, his own kind of toxin ran through his veins. “What makes you different?”

“Are you going to bite me?” he asked. “Then bite me. Bite me, if you dare.”

For once, I didn’t dare. Letting go of his arm, he nearly toppled back into my dresser. “Tell me what’s different about you.”

Inspecting his wrist, he shook his head. “Nothing is wrong with me.”

“Your blood is—”

“Bite me, see for yourself,” he said. “Just do it. So we can put this whole thing to rest. My blood isn’t special.”

We were stuck in a situation now. I didn’t want to bite him because I didn’t know if I could handle the repercussions of a bite. But at the same time, the idea that it would enlighten me had me in a chokehold, quite literally, choking me. Soren climbed on the bed, over my body, sitting almost on my diaphragm. I wheezed. “I’m not going to bite you.”

“I heal quick,” he said. “If I have to open a vein up for you, I’ll do it. I’m not going to will you, won’t you with me. So, get it over with.”

“But if you’re not special, my venom will hurt you, you’ll become infected.” It was everything I never wanted for Soren. He broke through all of my baseline desires to pounce and kill, even when he was presenting himself like such a pretty blood-filled parcel.

We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment more, and then I did it. I latched onto his wrist, my fangs penetrating his skin, opening it up for the blood flow to fill my mouth, and my venom spraying inside him. I didn’t want to stop gulping back the sweet elixir contained within his veins. My knees bucked, pushing him forward on me. I secured him on my body with an arm across his back. I didn’t want him getting away, and if I’d been in my viper form, my body would’ve coiled around him, and my mouth searching for the narrowest part of his body to try and swallow.

Soren punched me square in the face, fortunately already against the pillow. He yanked his arm away and rolled off the bed, muttering to himself as he held his wrist.

The blood was all over my chin and mouth. My tongue worked overtime trying to lap it up. But I was right. His blood was unique. It was like drinking filtered ice water, there was something to it that I couldn’t put my finger on.

“I hope you’re happy,” he said. “I think you’re gonna leave a fucking bruise.”

“I’m sorry.” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of a hand and then licking it. The sweet after taste to his blood was like being hit with memories of childhood where everything had that same syrupy haze over it. Except, the haze was lifting, and I was seeing through the veil. Feeling through it all the strange happenings that occurred.

Soren whacked my leg again. “Get up,” he said. “We need to figure out a route, and you need to show me a map. I don’t really trust your memory, no offense.”

Honestly, he had a good reason not to trust my memory, I couldn’t even trust it. “Well, we still have to wait until my brother has left,” I told him. “If he knows I’m—I’m thinking for myself, then he’ll stay until I’m back under whatever it is he did to me. And my mom, come to think of it. She must’ve been the one who devised this entire thing.” My mom had always been encouraging me to be just like Drakon, as if she needed a spare heir when Drakon had his entire life planned out.

“Fine, I have an idea,” he said. “Get dressed. I want a tour.”

I shook my head. He was acting wild now. “No chance. You’re not going outside.”

Soren jumped onto me, shifting into a flying squirrel form. He began lashing out at my chest with his sharp claws, swiping and sweeping long marks.

“No,” I pulled him, but he clung to my chest hair. He just kept hold of me until I was out of bed and standing. He pushed himself off me and went gliding across the room until he landed by the door, shifting into his human form.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re going to smuggle me by your chest. I want a full tour, every single room, and I want to see where all the omegas are being kept. If you tell me no again, I go for your dick. Sorry, dicks, plural. Twice the pain.”

My hand coiled to clutch at my cocks. “Jeez, I didn’t remember you being this feral. Is that a recent thing?”

“I know that if you want to get somewhere, you’ve got to act like the person you want it from,” he said. “So, what you’re seeing is me showing you your actions. I know, it’s a shame, right.”

There was no fighting with him about this. He wanted to go explore, and he wasn’t going alone. Besides, with my scent and my clothes masking him, we weren’t likely to be caught or noticed, but there was always that slim chance, and I didn’t like all the possibilities that lived there.

Soren’s flying squirrel animal form fit snug by my chest once I was dressed in my Syndicate attire. He stood out in comparison to the dark colors, and he left small fibers of fur, but nobody was going to get close enough to see that.

We’re agreed that he would tug on my chest hair, the left side for me to go left, and the right side for me to right. It was less of an agreement and more that what he wanted, and I was too busy going through the mental turmoil of knowing everything in my life had been manufactured for me. The only real thing that had happened in it so far was Soren, or so I hoped.

The underground compound was a maze of passages, but if you kept on going, you were bound to circle on yourself. It helped that everything was signposted as well. That was a new addition to the piped interior after intoxicated serpentine soldiers would find themselves lost.

As we approached the first wing of omegas undergoing the Rotmor mutations, Soren scratched my chest, a signal we hadn’t discussed, but I paused for him. I had a clear view through the porthole window of the soldiers inside, standing watch as the bound omegas in the beds were in semi-induced comas. It was my suggestion that they would sleep through the process, and progressively, the omegas were given less pain medication to see just the pain of the mutations.

“I know,” I mumbled to Soren at my chest. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to free them all. And even if we do, they’re going to be in so much pain, they might wish they’re dead anyway. Is it really anyway to live?”

He scratched me once more and I walked inside the room.

The three soldiers came to attention in a sloppy military fashion. They stood with their salutes until I nodded at them to stand down. “It’s just an inspection,” I said. “Noticed anything unusual happening with them?”

Each of the soldiers had that same blackened film on their teeth. It had always disgusted me, but now, more-so. I felt like I was an imposter stepping into Vasilis’s shoes. It was strange to see it now. “No, Sir.”

“Did you hear the Apex’s talk earlier?” I asked.

All three of them smiled. They knew what that it meant for him to be here and speak, especially on the topic of impregnating these omegas, and these ones in particular, in their current state, I didn’t want to think about it.

“You’re all relieved,” I said. “I want to check each of them alone.”

Without question, they walked off, leaving the large room.

There were still conflicting emotions within me. The feelings I’d once found power in, which was seeing these omegas come in from the van and the smell of how scared they were being tied to the beds and bitten. It didn’t mix well with who I knew myself to be, and that was someone who didn’t want to infect anyone.

Since we were alone, I spoke aloud to Soren, even if he couldn’t respond, except with tugs on my chest hair and scratching at me. I assumed I would bleed out if he kept at it, or maybe he was biting me, I didn’t know.

“Do you think you could do what you did to me, but to them?”

I assumed there was a way he could, but since I didn’t even know how he’d done it to me, and since I was an Alpha, it might not have had the same effect. I had too many questions swimming around my head, and nobody to answer them with me.

There were twelve omegas in this room, the first batch were the most at peace, even with the disease ravaging them. I wondered what cruelty divined the other groups should be without pain killers. Soren was bound to have many questions when we got back to the room, and we still had a tour to continue. I examined each of the omegas and Soren made it known to my flesh that he knew the omegas we were near.

I left them untouched. I didn’t know what they were being pumped with, and how it would interact with them. The last thing I wanted was for them to be in any pain.

The doors swung open and my brother sauntered inside with Naja strutting beside him, her tablet in hand tapping away.

“Three soldiers left their post,” he said, walking toward me. “You wanted to start pumping and dumping little bro?” he laughed and grabbed my by the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, but we should really wait until these ones are conscious.”

“Don’t worry, I—”

“We’ve got to make sure the Rotmor has really taken them,” he said. “We did this in Arizona with a test size. The offspring they produce don’t have any of the side effects, like us.”

“What do you mean?”

He laughed, his hard hand squeezing at my shoulder. “Come on, you know.”

“Know what?”

“Dad was an infected omega, mom was always the Alpha, she carried the Rotmor,” he said. “I know you don’t remember much about him, but before he died, he was swelling up and purple. Mom wanted more kids but he died beforehand.”

I shook my head. “I thought he died from the wolves,” I said. “He was taken and torn apart.”

Naja looked away from her screen to look at me, she smiled. “That’s the story we tell the soldiers,” she said. “They come to us because their families have been through it. They think we’re the same, so they pledge themselves to the cause.”

If my brother’s hand hadn’t been holding me down, I might’ve veered off kilter and fallen. “Yeah, right. But, I kinda assume it was still the case. Is mom around?”

Drakon snickered. “She’s in Cali at the compound, we’ve had an amazing turn out there. She’s been infecting at least a fifty omegas in the last week alone, but between us, I’m not sure how much her venom holds up to ours.” He smiled, flashing a fang at me, and scaring Soren to pinch me.

“I feel like I need some air,” I said. “What else might I be misremembering then?”

He stood at my side and pulled me into his arm. “You’re still remembering to drink,” he said. “I don’t want you freaking out again.”

“Drink?”

Naja held the tablet up. “Smile,” she said. A light flashed on the back of the tablet.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m drinking,” I said. “Why?”

“The blood you get sent?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good, good,” he said. “I’m just worried you’re getting in your head again, that’s all.”

“Again?” I asked. I’d clearly been able to combat this before, but that meant I’d also been put back under whatever haze again. I didn’t like that idea, especially not with Soren around, or what might happen to him. Maybe he wasn’t the cure after all.

“Yeah, last time you found some blanket,” he laughed. “It stank like some dirty rodent omega. Anyway, if you’re feeling up to it. We were going to head up to the surface and see how depraved some of those soldiers were for a little hit of venom.”

Nope. Soren was the cure. Or maybe he was just my cure. “No, I’m a little tired—” Soren tugged me. “Yeah. Sure.” I didn’t know if he wanted that, but it was one way I could get him out of this place alive, on the surface.