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There was a giant pain welling in my chest from the way Soren fought back with me on everything. I hoped we had a connection where he’d understand why I did what I had to do to keep him safe. I owed him it, not like there was a score to be kept, but I’d saved him on multiple occasions now, and I’d been repaying him for years by sending injured omegas his way when he worked at the hospital.

A knock came at my door.

“I’m sorry I’m going to have to do this,” I said before wrapping a cloth around Soren’s mouth to keep him quiet. “Since you’re not eating, you don’t need to use that.”

One of the black-toothed soldiers whose breath stank of death stood there with a smile, as if he wasn’t filled with the shame of being addicted to my family’s venom. “The Apex is here,” he said. “He’s requesting you in the main hall.” He was barely unable to even look past me inside the room to even see Soren bound to my bed, and if he did, he probably cared even les to ask about it.

Of course. Naja had mentioned he was coming. My eye twitched, having to deal with my older brother and Soren. I liked a singular focus in life. I was easily distracted. “I’ll be there once I’ve changed,” I told him. I had oil and rice all over my clothes, and I didn’t need my brother pointing it out to me in front of everyone. He rarely missed an opportunity to show everyone he was older and better than me.

Soren mumbled under the cloth I’d wrapped around his mouth, but I kept it in place. I’d already listened to enough of what he’d had to say.

“You wanna close your eyes while I change?” I asked, fingering my belt buckle to unfasten it.

He shook his head and glared right at me until I pulled my pants down and flashed him. His eyes grew wide for a moment before he screwed them shut. I had warned him I was getting undressed. It wasn’t the look I usually got when someone saw my two cocks.

“I won’t be long. Don’t try and get yourself noticed in here. I promised not to hurt you, but it doesn’t mean they won’t.” It was the same warning I’d given him before. “I’m being serious, Soren. You’ll have to trust me on this.”

He mumbled under the mouth binding some more until I removed it. “Fine,” he said. “But keep this out of my mouth. It tasted like dirt. And you can undo my arms. Please. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve already thought about it—”

“But can I trust you?”

“Can I trust you is the real question?”

I shrugged. “You should trust me, because I’m your lifeline. Should I trust you, is that question I need answered.” The last thing either of us wanted was someone catching him. I didn’t have an answer to hiding an omega in my room, other than for sexual reasons, and even then, I’d stopped entertaining those ideas when I realized Soren must’ve hated me.

He nodded. “If anyone comes in, I’ll shift. I’ll hide. They have more chance of finding me if I’m like this.”

“True. Fine. Well, don’t try and leave. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

I untied one of his hands. “Pinky promise,” I said, holding a pinky out for him. “And you know, if you break a pinky promise, your pinky belongs to me.”

He extended his pinky finger out to me, wrapping it around mine. “I pinky promise you,” he said. “And if you break it. I break your pinky finger.”

“How would I break it?”

“By not helping me leave.”

I did want him to leave, but he had to learn why he couldn’t stay first. “Fine.”

We tightened our grips on each of our pinkies for a moment, solidifying the promise. I trusted him because he’d never broken his word to me, well, assuming I was working on information from ten years ago. I didn’t know if I could say the same for me, for all I knew, I might’ve owed him my broken pinky if I didn’t keep up my end of the bargain.

The compound was structured almost like an ant colony, it was certainly modeled after one of them considering they knew how to have all the rooms and chambers set out in the best way possible. It wasn’t my idea, it was the people who were in charge of the logistics, and another one of my brothers advisors. The three of them, and Naja was one.

In the large hall down a floor but spanned two floors in height. There were rows of chairs, each occupied by a different class of the Syndicate, and each of them becoming quiet the moment I passed by. I was the last one to arrive, it seemed, walking down the middle aisle towards my brother on the raised platform with his fancy gilded chair. He was tall, black hair, orange eyes, and had a near luminous green viper around his neck. Just a snake, or a prisoner forced to keep their shifted form.

“You’re late,” he said to me in front of everyone.

I bowed my head to him. “Apologies, I was dealing with something important. We had an attempted breach I shut down.”

“I hadn’t heard,” he said, glancing to Naja on his right.

“I didn’t—” she began.

“No, you wouldn’t have heard,” I said in a hushed tone. “It was something I was able to contain, but if you’d like, in future, I can absolutely let the information out to the rest of the Syndicate.”

Drakon nodded at me. “Be seated, brother.”

On the front row, an empty seat. They were fold away chairs, plastic, and painful to sit on for long durations. I wished I could’ve been alleviated of some of the pain through one of the means the soldiers found themselves in through my venom.

Beside my brother, at either side, he was flanked by Naja, head of intelligence, Zito, head of operations, and Puglise, head of finance for the Syndicate. Each of them had earned other names for themselves, and had attached to their roles with ease. Naja, being in everyone’s business. Zito, through demolishing towns just like New Eden. And Puglise, from a past life as a loan shark. They were the three snakes of the coming apocalypse, four if counting my brother.

Standing to talk, Drakon started with applause. “You’ve all been fantastic,” he said. “Each and everyone of you here has been an amazing help to this faction of the Syndicate. We are growing stronger each and every single day. The world will know just how violent we can be when we’re pushed into a corner.”

This wasn’t about being pushed into a corner. We were doing this as revenge for something that had happened to our family years ago. I realized quickly, I’d been left out of the loop, placated by my brother’s forces into doing grunt work. I was on the outs of this family.

“There will come a time when I call upon each and every one of you,” he continued. “You’re going to be pivotal in the future of this Syndicate. We are going to kill everyone who crosses our paths until we find ourselves outnumbering the humans themselves. Once the omegas have successfully taken to the mutations of Rotmor venom, you are then all free to breed with them. We are looking to create a strong serpentine family.”

My throat grew dry. I’d been lied to. I’d been selling a lie to everyone, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a strange bout of guilt. I’d told Soren those same lies, that these people were free once the venom had cemented itself inside them. But in that, I’d also told him the truth, because they were still waiting on it, but for different reasons. They were going to bear offspring with the same mutated afflictions as my family. With hundreds more of us, the would be no stopping the Syndicate’s power. And I’d be trapped forever.

My brother had a way with a crowd, rallying them all behind him like he must’ve done in Nevada and Arizona. I wondered what else I hadn’t been made aware about, perhaps other hubs had taken over other states too.

“This is also our last call for omegas,” Drakon said. “We want every last omega you can sniff, scout, and pull from whatever hole they’re hiding in. They’re either with us, or against us, and if they’re with us, they will be given a first class seat to the world as it bows to them for what they’re about to undertake.”

There was only one omega untouched in the compound, and now, everyone was going to be onto him. My heart raced as if telling me to run and get Soren out, but my body stayed, forcing me to watch my brother’s thrall of serpents in sync as they all hissed in applause for him. My brother wasn’t just wanting to get revenge, he wanted to be the head of a dictatorship.

“Come now, brother,” he said, gesturing out to me. I joined him on stage as he wrapped an arm behind my back and shoulder. His snake slithering across, connecting us. “Here. I am proud to call this man my brother. Vasilis will father the new generation right there, alongside you all. And I know we’ve all seen him slinging himself around in a shower.” They all continued to applaud and laugh. “This is the start of history. We are Serpentine!”

They chanted with him. “We are Serpentine! We are Serpentine!”

***

Twelve Years Ago

Medusa Vepres was cold, she always had been. In her animal form, she had midnight black scales. She was still a pit viper like rest of the family, but her color was what brought so many people into the family. Everyone wanted to know her, everyone begged for her blessing.

In our small underground dwelling, my mother had gathered other serpents from nearby clans. She wore bright draped fabrics in beautiful floral designs. It was disarming to some, seeing all that color and design, only to know she’d slit your throat the moment you crossed her.

I watched from a distance. My brother, Drakon standing at my side.

“We are on the verge of something great,” our mother said to her group. “We are about to bless the world in ways it hasn’t been blessed before, for our people, for our kind. We are going to bite one hand and give them their apple with the other.”

Drakon snickered, not catching anyone’s attention. “I can’t believe she gets money from them like this,” he said. “I’d force people to give it. I’d corner them and get them to empty their pockets.”

“So would dad,” I reminded him. “And that’s how he died. That’s how generations of our family have died.”

He rolled his eyes. “You think that’s the reason. Nobody wants what we have.”

“And that’s why I’ll never mate,” I said.

“Yeah, but you have had sex though,” he said.

“No, and I don’t want to. It’s a disease, Drak. I’ve seen what happens. The addictions it creates in other serpents, and how other people get driven to madness from it. I’m not going to put anyone through that.”

“Shut up, you’ve got to have had sex,” he said. “You’re twenty-five and still a virgin?”

“I’ll die one,” I said, clenching on my teeth. “I’d rather keep whatever I’ve got to myself. You know, at least then it dies with me.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone goes through that. That’s why we have third cousins or something out there,” he said. “Mom said when we’re ready, she’ll introduce us. You know, since we need to carry on the family name, and the family line. It’s down to the two of us now, bro.”

“I’m not doing that either.”

I wasn’t totally against mating with someone, but I’d come to terms with it. I didn’t want to. The idea of bringing life into this world wasn’t right. Especially not when it’s life was going to be predetermined by this family. I knew I was stuck in it, and I’d hate for anyone else’s fate to be stuck in this family as well.