Page 20 of The First Omega Made (Scales and Tails of Fate #2)

Doc

Wallace lay on my exam table, his breaths uneven as I did him a favor and connected an intravenous drip. He’d let himself go too long without a top-up and needed some nutrients.

While he luxuriated in chemical sustenance, I thawed a sample from Vil, his isolated white blood cells.

Unlike human white blood cells, they proliferated in the bloodstream and behaved in odd ways.

Their macrophage equivalent not only enveloped cells, but instead of destroying infected ones, they rectified them.

They pushed little tendrils through cell walls and into the nucleus with snippets of DNA just repairing away in a viral fashion.

Unlike Noel’s samples, Vil’s took time to settle in. It’d be a day or two before Wallace felt right.

“Feels like someone inverted my grav boots.” Wallace groaned and slapped an ice pack on his head.

“We could speed things up. Want to try a shot of Noel’s isolate?” I tossed a used needle into the RPC and cleaned my area.

“Not today. Maybe when we’re at base sometime. If I’m going to be laid up for a while, I’d rather not have crew to feed.” Wallace huffed. He took his duties feeding us seriously.

“Then you won’t get shore leave?” I raised a brow and gave him a look.

Wallace thoroughly enjoyed shore leave. He got to shop for and sample new food—when stores would allow him in.

He was charismatic enough to do it. That, and he had more Tal in him, so he looked less like a hybreed than he did a Tal hybrid and didn’t get questioned.

“But who will cook?” He lifted the edge of his ice pack and stared me down.

“Sarge can cook.” For something that didn’t have taste buds, he was remarkably adept at it.

“True.” He grumbled and sighed. “So, I gotta ask questions, and I’m going to be rude, but I’m curious.”

“Ask away.” I busied myself tidying up and running the air samples that Merriel had extracted and sent through one of the ship’s message chutes.

“What am I?”

“What do you mean?” I opened a panel in the wall to reveal a stage for a microscope. Merriel’s cameras would do the rest for me. As I lay slides out and cleared them for plating, Wallace huffed.

“Am I an alpha or beta or…” He waved his hand toward his groin. I’d not kept it secret what’d happened to my genitals. I wouldn’t lie. It was weird but oddly comforting.

“Beta, like Gorm.” I shoved the slide into the view field and glanced up at a screen. Nothing concerning lit up, no spores of the variety Sarge feared.

“So, if I went full transition…” He hesitated.

“Your eyes would likely change color, scale loss on your face. You’d be Naleucian in appearance, but I’m not sure about your color. I’d assume you’d be in the spectrum of orange since you’re more dark copper?”

“I’m brown.” Wallace huffed.

“And it’s a beautiful brown. I like the sheen of your scales. It’s more pronounced now that I can see differently. You really are beautiful.” I offered him a half grin.

“So, you think I’d have a chance at getting me an omega if we find another?” His tone, while usually terse and often crude, went soft.

“I’d have to ask Noel if his opinion matches my own, but we’re both mated, so we may be skewed. But, I do find your pattern appealing to my omega nature.” I cleared the first sample and started on another.

Wallace grunted at my answer.

“Merriel, can you ask Noel if he thinks Wallace is hot?” I continued my work as silence stretched on. “Merriel?”

“Sec, Doc. Noel is being Noel.” Merriel usually jived with Noel well, so the statement made me pause.

“He says he finds Wallace to have a normal body temperature as far as he was aware.” Merriel’s tone indicated exasperation.

“Can you ask him if he finds Wallace sexually appealing?” I waited. And waited.

“Wallace isn’t Vil. Basically.” Merriel audibly sighed.

“Phrase it as a hypothetical if he weren’t mated. Would Wallace be sexually appealing to another omega?” I rubbed at my forehead as a headache pinched at my nerves.

“He says that Wallace possesses many desirable characteristics in a fertile beta specimen, specifically the chromatic pattern in his scales.” This, Merriel seemed more appreciative of.

“There’s your answer.” I gestured up.

“But he’s still not Vil,” Merriel added.

“I guess.” I glanced over at Wallace, satisfied when he settled down with a half grin.

I returned to my slides and finished up, finding no contamination. As I rose to finish my work, my belly brushed the counter. I glanced down and frowned. The shape of my abdomen had changed slightly, and I’d not accustomed myself to the new anatomy.

I’d been eating more meat as of late, craving protein like the higher-percentage hybreeds did.

Since I wasn’t much of a meat eater before, it must have been the change to my diet.

I made a note to check it out later. It didn’t feel like gas, but it did feel sort of solid and full where my digestive tract overlapped.

So, when Wallace’s bag emptied, I shooed him out with some nutrient shakes to drink and told Merriel to have Sarge on cooking duty for the night. One meal missed wouldn’t kill Wallace.

“Okay, but stay the fuck out of the prime rib, okay?” Wallace glared at me on the way out.

“Tell him, not me.” I waved him off and sanitized the examination table and hopped up, positioning myself below the 4D photostereoscope probe.

“Merriel, can you scan my lower digestive tract?” I lay back on the table and crossed my legs, propping my head up on my hands as I folded them behind my head. My tail swished lazily at my feet, curling and relaxing.

I didn’t need to check my digestive tract at all; it seemed. I pursed my lips and ended the scan with a cold chill running down my spine. No doubt Sarge would feel the utter terror.

“Merriel.” I folded my hands over my chest and stared at the ceiling. “How long can sperm stay stored in a Naleucian male’s body?”

“Uhhh, lemme check.” No pointless beeping and booping. Merriel took me seriously as I lay there, evening my breath out, daring not to put a hand lower. “Data just says it can be stored for the entirety of mating season, but no idea how long that is.”

I closed my eyes and rested my hand on my face.

A few long minutes passed before Sarge wandered in, his presence filled with caution as he stared me down. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” I swallowed hard. “Shut the door, please.”

“Progenitors’ sake, you’re saying please. It’s bad.” Sarge whistled over teeth and lips he hadn’t mastered yet, so it was mostly a hiss. “Are you okay or not?”

“Still don’t know.” I swallowed hard and kept staring at the ceiling as he slid the door closed and locked it.

“Can you at least give me a clue? I’ve been nervous as fuck all day and can’t figure out where this line of static in my head is coming from and it ain’t Vil, Noel, or Nexus.” Sarge sighed and pulled up a stool, flopping to sit beside me. He grabbed my hand without hesitation and squeezed.

I rucked my shirt up and gestured at the slightly swollen surface of it.

“Bad food?” His tail twitched, and that foreign static pricked at the back of my mind, too. I bet it was louder in the med bay than elsewhere in the ship.

“Egg.” I managed to hoarsely mouth the word and bathed in the long silence.

“Is it infertile?” He canted his head and stared at my belly.

“Fertilized.” I laced my fingers tightly over my chest, resisting the urge to touch it.

“By just me? I thought that—” Sarge audibly gulped.

“A Naleucian omega can store sperm and keep it alive for some time, apparently.” I took a deep, shaking breath. Gorm was good for a fuck, but a mate he was not and sure as fuck was not who I wanted in my forever.

“Oh. Gorm.” He nodded slowly. “Do we tell him?”

“I’d be a dick not to, but how do you feel about this?” I’d wanted a baby since the moment I held Nexus’s egg. Every time the little scamp piped up, saying my name and ran through the med bay or snuggled against me, my heart sang. I could have my own.

“Well, I don’t think Gorm would make a good parent.

I don’t know if he’d want to be involved, but he does do well with Nexus.

” Sarge placed a hand so gently over my belly I only registered the warmth for a second before his touch.

He closed his eyes as if in prayer, listening to that other static—a new life in our bond.

I couldn’t stand it, and I reached for his hand, pressing mine down atop his. “I don’t want Gorm to be between us anymore. I don’t love him.”

“I knew that. If I thought you did, we’d be having a different conversation. I don’t love him, either.” Sarge rubbed his hand in a slow circle.

“What do you want to do about it?” I held my breath in wait for the alternative.

“I want a family, to raise a baby with you, and to love you as long as this body allows me.” Sarge leaned over and pressed his lips to mine; the kiss we shared a special one full of the song in our bond.

It was music unlike any I’d ever heard. “And the child is from this body, but this body is me. We are fused and one. It’s not even a host. It’s me. ”

“I think Noel used his own blood to complete the fusion. This is you, now.” I studied his face as I said so and instead of sadness or disgust, there was only utter joy.

“Then, he is mine. If truly Noel used his own blood, my essence, however edited it may be, will live on.” He laughed once and shook his head. “And we thought taking a Naleucian body would kill us.”

“It just ruins you for all other bodies.” I frowned, but Sarge only kissed me again.

“I don’t want another body. I want you and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I’ve never wanted to reproduce as a Colthraxian.

I voluntarily had myself desexed. My gamete organs—I had them severed.

” Tears blossomed in his eyes, and I treasured how easily he could show his feelings in this new form.

“Do you know why Shafa said it was a crime to mate an omega?”

“Because we’re disgusting broodmares who ruin their polyamorous ways?” I shrugged, but didn’t push him away.

“Because a disease wiped so many of them out that there were so few left. Even omega young died in their shells.” Sarge traced his free hand over my head. “And yet here you are. Noel made you, and so many died from Noel’s genes because they, too, were omega. You survived.”

The kiss he gave me at the end of that bombshell made me melt. My toes curled, and I whimpered into the kiss. “Then let’s pray our little one is an omega, too.”

“I think we need to head to Starbase Delta and return to Paradise. I know where the Naleucians live, now.” He sniffled and took a shaking breath.

“Merriel. You know what to do.” I couldn’t hide my smile.

“Alright! Live action lizard Jerry Springer!” He beeped out, and both Sarge and I stared at his sensors and bewilderment blossomed in the bond.