INK & ESPRESSO

"Carlyn?" Josh said.

"Joshy? Where… What happened?"

"Guys!" Josh yelled. "He's up! He's okay! Guys!" Josh ran to the bed and threw himself partially on Carlyn, which tugged a little on the IV in Carlyn's arm.

"Ah!" Carlyn groaned. "How did I? What happened at the march?"

"Carlyn!" Loren said as she marched into the room and sat on the empty side of the bed. "Honey, are you alright?"

"I'd feel better if I knew what happened," Carlyn said as nicely as he could. He smiled at Davis, who climbed onto the bed and gave him a hug.

"You passed out from exhaustion at the march," Davis said. "You, Felix, and dozens of others. The riots, the cleanup, the protest, all back to back, it was just too much with too little rest."

"I told you you needed rest," Loren said. "You should have seen that Taylor."

"Yea," Josh said. "That hot broad strip, or broadcloth, or whatever-she-is beta. She took over The Lucretian Legion after Felix passed out. She's a badass."

"She's a Broad Band Tribute," Loren said. "And a badass. Becka took over for you when you passed out."

"Good," Carlyn said. "How did we get home?"

"We dragged anyone who passed out to center of the ranks for safety," Davis said. "The police offered to take you, but we were worried about breaking ranks. The night went on and eventually went got news that H.R. 183 had died."

"It died?" Carlyn breathed. "Really?"

"In the house," Josh said. "It barely got any votes. There were petitions, protests, threats they would never work in politics again. Calls flooded offices, emails too. Besides the companies building the pairing centers took hit in stock prices, so did the labs that make Heat. The whole plan was falling apart around them. They had no choice."

Carlyn chuckled. "Thank Goddess for that."

"Yea," Loren said, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

"After we got the all-clear, we packed up and got everyone who needed it to a hospital," Davis sighed. "You were only in a hospital a few hours. We convinced your doctor to let us take you home."

"Good," Carlyn said. "I'd be unhappy if I woke up in a hospital room." He sighed. "Now, where's Johann?"

Loren, Josh and Davis paused and looked at each other. Then they all began to get off the bed.

"We'll get him," Loren said with a small smile.

"Where is he?" Carlyn asked, sitting up. "Why isn't he here?"

"Just hush, honey," Loren said. "We're going to get him."

With nothing he could do, Carlyn sat back and waited. He smelled Johann coming before he saw him enter the doorway. Johann smelled anxious. Carlyn shifted in bed.

Johann appeared at door and hovered at entrance without coming in. He was dressed casually, jeans and t-shirt. Carlyn finally had time to notice Johann's hair had been cut. It was layered now, and relatively short, falling around his face and ears. It was too short to put in a ponytail in any case. It seemed to have gotten wavier with the length removed.

"Johann?" Carlyn muttered.

"Hey," Johann said, then came inside and partially closed the door behind him. He walked up the bed and sat down by Carlyn, frowning. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Carlyn said. "You?"

"I'm fine."

"Good. But you look… upset."

Johann took a deep breath and looked away. "Did I ever tell you how I joined The Lucretian Legion?"

"No."

"When I was a kid, I knew I was gay before getting my designation."

"Well," Carlyn said. "People must have thought you were going to be an alpha."

Johann laughed. "Yea, pretty much. You know what they say about gay teens."

"They're always alphas or omegas," Carlyn stated.

"Yea. Well, I thought I'd be an alpha. My dad was so sure and so proud." Johann frowned. "He was crushed when he found out the truth. Mom wasn't though. She and Minnie were Dad's only omegas. They were thrilled. They got me on suppressants and everything.

"But problem was, there was this guy. My best friend. He was like the Superman to my Batman. We were the iconic duo, you know. And he was always trailing a little behind me. So, I'd thought, I'd be an alpha, and he'd be in my harem… But I was an omega. I didn't know what to do.

"Turns out though he was an alpha and he had no intentions of breaking us up. He said he loved me. I believed him. We were sixteen, of course I believed him. He started doing things for me, carrying my stuff, getting my lunch, anything he could for me. I loved it. It felt… special. He even invited me on a skiing trip with his family."

"That's good," Carlyn said hopefully. He knew how this was going to end, of course, but he couldn't help but try to make Johann smile.

"I know," Johann said, giving in, smiling. "I was so excited. I let him take all my bags. I wasn't even mad when he lost one of them. I wasn't even mad when I figured out it was the one with my suppressant in it. After all, he loved me. He'd protect me from any alpha that tried to get near me. I thought I had nothing to worry about."

Carlyn frowned. "What happened."

"He raped me. He slept in my room because we'd been sleeping in the same room for years. He said he couldn't help himself. He told me that my pheromones made him do it. I tried to fight him but, I don't know, something was wrong with me. I couldn't. I hated every minute, but I couldn't get away. He was stronger. I was frozen.

"The next morning, I took a little bag with some of my stuff and left. By the time I got home, my parents knew what happened, and that I had run away. I found Minnie first. She shut me in the harem. I didn't understand why. I wanted my parents. Then Dad came home and found me. He yelled at me. He was so furious at me for running away. He said I'd finally done something decent, landed an alpha, and I had to screw it up. He said he'd had to cover for me to make sure they still wanted me."

Johann sighed. He looked so tired.

"Adam - that was his name, Adam - he hounded me at school. Public love confessions, flowers, the works. Showed up at my clubs and part-time job. And every time I saw him, I froze. I felt warm for a second before I would snap out of it. But it started to take me longer and longer to snap to my senses, and everyone just wanted me to get with him. So I did. I dated him, married him right out of high school."

"Was he a good alpha, after that?" Carlyn asked.

Johann laughed gently. "No. He kept raping me. Blamed it on my pheromones. I tried taking suppressants, but they kept disappearing. From the bathroom cabinet, then my bedside drawer, then my bag, my car, my locker at work. I couldn't seem to keep them. And he kept at it. Then I got a shot. After work, once a month. Didn't tell him about it. Told him the suppressants were making me gain too much weight. He raped me still. It took me that long to figure it out. I told my doctor I was going to kill myself. She told me to go to this yoga studio for omegas."

"Yoga?" Carlyn said indignantly. "You tell her that and she tells you to go do yoga?"

"I was pissed too," Johann shrugged. "But she insisted. Pressed this one spot. No other, she said. Go here. I did yoga for six months. It was nice. I got strong. I almost felt at peace. I learned to turn off my brain when Adam wanted sex from me. Then, six months in, they went on a retreat. We were all invited, told to pack light because there would be hiking. Adam was happy I was getting out instead of moping. He liked these classes. He liked how flexible I was, liked my body. I went on the retreat and never saw him again.

"The Lucretian Legion controls the retreat. They use places like it to whisk omegas in bad situations away from their abusers."

"That's amazing," Carlyn said.

"I met Annabelle in The Legion. You've seen her with Felix and Taylor."

"The omega girl," Carlyn said keeping his face as neutral as possible.

Johann smiled softly. "She was my first real friend in The Legion. Annabelle had been giving to a pairing center by her parents. She wasn't like the others. She was like me. Angry, driven."

"And you two worked your way up in the ranks together," Carlyn guess with genuine smile.

"We were furious and dedicated to the cause. I think Felix liked that about us."

"I like that about you." Carlyn shifted in bed and in doing so, his eyes caught sight of his bear. "Did I ever tell you about Mr. Pookey?"

"The teddy bear?" Johann asked in a flat voice.

"Yes, my bear."

"I did wonder why you're a grown-ass man with a fucking teddy bear."

"It was a gift from my birth mother," Carlyn said with a smile.

"Oh," Johann whispered. "You said she wasn't bonded to Karen."

Carlyn closed his eyes and smiled tightly. "Around the time I was born, the alpha women my mother spent time with had these parties where they used their harems in common. The children from these orgies were normally given the fathers by mutual agreement, or the alpha of birth mother and alpha who fathered the child would come to some sort of agreement."

"All I'm hearing," Johann said with a deep frown, "is they made a shit ton of bastards with no intentions of putting them anywhere."

"Well… you could put it that way, yes. Karen was more careful than most, though. I was her first, and I'm supposedly her only bastard. Basically, she was only black alpha in the party and when I popped out, they tried to give her to me and she refused to take me. So, I lived in the harem with my birth mother."

"You… lived in a harem?"

"Yea. It was wonderful. I spent time with only omegas. They bought me little outfits and taught me to walk. I was homeschooled. I was always happy. The harem was my whole world. I was safe there. I was loved."

"That's so nice," Johann said with a smile.

"It was," Carlyn said. Then he frowned. "But then I got designated at fifteen. I was an alpha. Lyric found out by word of mouth. She hadn't even known I existed before that, but she came to see me, anyway. She wanted Karen to take me in. I don't know how she convinced her, but two weeks later I left the harem. The only thing I could take with me was Mr. Pookey."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's okay… I never liked Karen's house. It was cold and lonely. My brothers didn't get along with me as much as Lyric did back then. Karen ignored me like she did her omegas and her children. When I took over The Fangs and got my harem, I guess I just built my own world around myself. You were right about me. I did live in a bubble, a fantasy land where I didn't have to deal with things outside my own life."

"I was hard on you," Johann admitted.

"You were right about me," Carlyn repeated.

They sat together, not speaking for a moment. Carlyn reached out with his skewered arm and took Johann's hand.

"I'm glad I met you," he said.

"Me too," Johann said. "Can I make a confession?"

"Of course."

"I've been sleeping with Loren, Josh, and Davis."

"You… oh." Carlyn smiled. "Okay."

"I'm sorry."

"No. You're their harem-brother. And I had wondered about… well, there was one night we discussed… urges."

"Yea. I know," Johann said. "That's why, when I got injected, I wouldn't have minded if you had-"

"I would never-"

"I know, but I would have understood. I got… I guess… used to sleeping with someone, so one night I was staying up with Josh in his room, and he offered to let me stay the night and I just… I wanted to tell you, but it just brought up all these feelings I wasn't ready to deal with."

Carlyn smiled. "I get it. You don't want this. You don't want me. I understand your beliefs and I would never ask you to betray them. But I know Davis, Josh, and Loren will miss you when you leave."

Staring with a blank smile, Johann froze. Carlyn watched him, trying to figure out what he'd said wrong. After a moment, Johann took a long, deep breath.

"You are an idiot, Carlyn Tracy," Johann said through clenched teeth. "What I'm trying to say is, I love it here. I love your harem. I love being a part of your harem. I love fixing breakfast in the morning with Loren, and dinner at night. I love trying reigning Josh in during shopping trips and listening to Davis talking about chemistry and biology. I love waking up next to you. When I was poisoned, the one thing that kept me calm was that you would find me, and even if you were affected by whatever it was, it would be okay because it was you. You'd take care of me no matter what and keep me safe. I was happy you choose to uphold my ideals, but I wouldn't have been angry if you had chosen differently." Johann put his free hand on top of Carlyn's. "I would have even thanked you for it. But only if it had been you."

"I could never," Carlyn said.

"I know," Johann sighed. "I got permission to stay here, if you'll have me."

"Is being one of four omegas in an alpha's harem really what you want?" Carlyn asked. Hearing yes once just wasn't enough. Carlyn needed to be sure.

"Being your omega, harem-brother to some of the best people I've ever known, is really what I want."

Johann leaned in and kissed Carlyn softly. The kiss melted Carlyn and made him feel like he was floating. When it ended, he was quietly breathless.

"Stay," Carlyn said. "Please stay."

"I'd love to," Johann replied.

A convoy of trucks, the trucks originally belonging to The Fangs, arrived at the gates in half an hour. Felix, trailed by Taylor and a dozen-and-a-half members of The Legion, walked into the meeting room, looked around and sat down.

“A distress signal?” Felix said, almost playfully. “You could have had someone put a request to meet through.”

“I sent a distress signal because this is an emergency,” Carlyn said.

“An emergency?” Felix frowned. “Explain.”

“What have you heard about House Resolution 183?”

The entire Lucretian Legion reacted, like a current going through them. Felix leaned forward and steepled his fingers.

“I would have said,” he began, “that I’ve heard good things. The Dignity of Omega Status Act. Finally. Everything we’ve worked for, protected by law. Omegas, really protected by law at last. But I’m guessing we’ve been sold out.”

Carlyn stared into Felix's eyes and said first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry.”

“How bad is it?” Felix asked calmly.

“You know the new drug on the street,” Carlyn said.

“Heat, they’re calling it,” Taylor said. “Melanotan XX. It’s a monstrosity.”

“It’s only part of the plan,” Carlyn said. “The riots changed the minds of the people in Congress. Old, conservative, know-it-alls. They think that life for omegas is too dangerous. So, they want to bring back new, improved, nationally backed, computerized pairing centers.”

The words cut through the omegas in the crowd like a knife. Carlyn saw it, felt it. It smelled like someone about to throw up.

“They’ll be like boarding schools,” Carlyn continued. “Omegas will be brought in when they’re designated and leave when they’re bonded with an alpha. In-between, they’ll be kept on a low dose of Melanotan. It’s supposed to help keep omegas calm and reverse residual effects caused by the widespread use of heat suppressants. Of course, that’s all horseshit. They’re planning on gathering every single omega and marking them like cattle.

“And if you think you’re an omega who is safe because you’re married, forget that. Only omegas in the harem of alpha are deemed mated. Beta-marriages under the new law will only be valid if the omega is officially mated to an alpha, and that alpha signs off on a member of their harem marrying a beta.

“And if you’re thinking you’re safe as part of a harem, every alpha has to register their omegas with a pairing center and have their bonds approved. If they’re not, the omegas will be removed and placed in a center.

“Lastly for those of you with children, once any of your children are designated as an omega, they must leave home and enter a pairing center. You will have limited access to them, and very limited control - if any - over what happens to them.”

The room was deathly quiet. People were looking around, looking at each other, looking at Carlyn and at Felix, waiting for someone to do something.

“When will they vote on this?” Felix asked. There was something different about his voice. It came from far away.

“Two weeks, if the schedule holds,” Carlyn replied.

“We have to hit the labs making Heat!” one of The Fangs said. “That shit has to be destroyed!”

“No!” Felix said. “More violence will only push the vote up. It must be destroyed; I agree, but only as part of a coordinated effort.”

“A group effort,” Carlyn said. “If we don’t all stand against this, we will all lose. Who is sure their lives and families will be safe? Their children? Is anyone willing to risk their own marriages and mates to this new system? Is anyone sure they can save themselves?”

Raji stood up, his 2 omegas huddled close to him. “No one is taking my family from me!” he said. “Anyway, who are they going to let decide which alphas get to have harems and which don’t? Look around; we’re a bunch of omegas who won’t be bonded and a bunch of black and brown alphas and betas. Who do you think they’re going to come for first? After they have every omega in chains who’s going to end up in chains next?!”

A low murmur of agreement went through the crowd. The Lucretian Legion came from all races of omega, but The Fangs were black and latino.

“The people in this room,” Adison said, “are the people they demonize on a daily basis. This game they’re playing is like the drug war. It’s never been about keeping people safe.”

Then, slowly, one of the omegas from The Fangs stood up. The Lucretian Legion and Fangs looked at her, and she hunched her shoulders a bit. But it wasn’t in fear; it was defensive.

“Now you all see,” she said. “You see what the world is like. It’s weird. The Fangs was always safer than being out on the streets. Pru took care of the girls. Carlyn took care of everybody. If you were a Fang, you were untouchable. That was something an omega couldn’t normally get. It was like being made from steel. But now they’re coming to take that too.” She paused for a moment, and Carlyn wished he knew her name. “Fuck that," she said. “They can drag me away kicking and biting. I will not go back to being a thing. Never.”

The Lucretian Legion began to cheer in an aloud synchronized roar, which fed into the room and was picked up The Fangs. The cheering lasted for a few minutes, and when it died down, Felix had walked over Carlyn and was whispering in his ear.

“We have work to do,” he said.

Carlyn nodded.

#

The weather was beautiful and sunny on the day of the vote. It was almost unrealistic how nice it was outside the Capitol. For Carlyn, nothing seemed quite real. He was walking with his harem down the main road towards the Capitol. Behind him and to his sides were other families, members of The Lucretian Legion, members of The Fangs, families from the communities, groups of single omegas who were friends. They walked in silence, in t-shirts and jeans, in boots and sneakers. The alphas took nothing with them. Betas and omegas and carried backpacks full of supplies.

It took a while for their silent march to gain attention because they drifted in a little at a time. Then the news started trickling in. Capitals of the country were all experiencing the same silence march. Reporters asked questions, but the crowd kept their eyes on the Capitol and said nothing. As the marchers grew in numbers, the space between them shrunk, then disappeared. They kept walking still, crowding closer and closer to the Capitol, filling the streets that formed a block around it, perfectly ordered on all sides.

Alphas were on the outside, closest to the Capitol, closest to the street. As they jammed in, Carlyn reached for his harem, let them take his hands, and felt them let him go, and they slipped deeper into the crowd. Just beyond the alphas were the betas, and in the middle of the group were the omegas.

Carlyn faced out. Reporters and news crews had their cameras pointed at them, and shouted questions that went unanswered. Police milled around but did nothing. The protest had been kept very low profile, word of mouth only, but Felix had quietly placed the proper forms. He made no guarantee on how the forms would protect them once things got going. Carlyn didn’t care. He normally ignored the law, anyway.

They waited. They stood in silence under the hot sun for what seemed like hours and waited, then all at once a thousand little beeps rose from inside their formation. The notifications got turned off a few at a time before the banners went up and the smoke bombs went out.

Grey canisters flew over the alphas’ heads and landed between them and the reports and police. As the smoke rose, the chant began.

“We are not things!” the omegas roared. “Vote down H.R. 183! We are not things! Vote down H.R. 183!”

The reporters were first through the smoke, taking pictures and shooting film, taking fast and asking questions. The alphas stood, arms linked, stoned-faced, not allowing anyone closer to the inner group.

The police were next through the line, shouting instructions to disband, which were ignored for the moment. They would become a bigger threat soon enough.

The chant rose from all sides of the Capitol Building. Carlyn couldn’t see, but knew from the plans that they had the streets filled and soon enough -

A loud crash interrupted Carlyn’s thoughts, but the chanting went on. “We are not things!” Another crash in distance at just the right interval. “Vote down H.R. 183!” Another, farther off, which left one more to go. “We are not things!” And the last. Now not only were the streets surrounding the Capitol Building filled with people, the intersections were blocked with tipped over trucks, just as planned. The police were becoming more aggressive. The chant was growing louder.

Ten minutes seemed like an hour. Thirty minutes seemed like a lifetime. Soon the reporters began asking about laboratories that attacked the drug Melanotan XX being destroyed. That was proof that a half hour had passed. The chant changed.

“Omegas are not things! Vote down H.R. 183!” the omegas and betas shouted. As agreed, the alphas were not going to speak. They were going to be silent protectors, the guardians of everyone else.

Through the fading smoke from the bombs and haze of activity, Carlyn saw the police assemble opposite them. He almost pitied them. How many of them had harems, had spouses, had children? They would all be taken from them. They were fools.

The first round of tear gas was a surprise. They threw it close to them, but not in their ranks. The betas slipped masks over the alphas face while the alphas kept their ranks closed. Carlyn pulled the alphas he was locked arms with closer to him and felt them do the same. It was a strange feeling, so many alphas touching willingly, but natural in some long-forgotten way.

The day drew on. The police attempted to force them to disband, and the chanting counted out each passing minute. Carlyn felt his body begin to wear down from lack of food, lack of water, exhaustion. The lines of people held each other up as the sun set.

News kept morale up. Local politicians from around the country had sided with the protesters, promising to refuse to enforce the contents of the Dignity of Omega Status Act, should it be passed. One representative, an alpha woman with a harem and grown omega children, got a hold of the bill and posted it online. She then read it out loud, surrounded by protesters.

“My harem is not full of objects,” she said. “They are not public property, or my property! They are human beings with rights given to them by their creator. My children will not be slaves! Congress will vote down H.R. 183, or they will pay for it.”

The evening came rolling in and the police grew more and casual about their interactions. They stopped using pepper spray as the sun disappeared. They began putting away their shields after that and edging closer to the lines. Finally, one of them came trotting up with a case of water and began passing it back.

Carlyn barely noticed when Adison came, lifted his mask and helped him drink a few sips. He was aware of the water, though. It was cold, and the best feeling he’d had in a long time. He closed his eyes to enjoy it. Figures floated around his head. Bodies twice his size moved around him, alphas, betas, and omegas, all working in tandem. Every type of human, just living and working together. Carlyn thought he was in some sort of utopia. But his head hurt, and so did his back and legs and feet. There were others lying beside him. All types. He wondered if they were dead, if the water was poisoned. He worried about his harem and his siblings and their harems. They were all out there somewhere in the march. Carlyn hoped he wasn’t dead.

When Carlyn opened the door to Johann's room, he was a hit with a smell that nearly knocked him to his knees. It was hot, musky, and unnaturally powerful. The scent made his head swim. It filled his mind with images he'd never seen before, but wanted to know so badly: Johann in deliciously compromised positions, begging, wanting. Carlyn bit the inside of his mouth, but it did little to lessen the hungry urges clawing at the pit of his stomach.

He lurched backwards, catching himself on the hallway wall and sliding down it. His body was reacting already, begging him to act on the delicious smell coming from Johann's room. Carlyn ignored it and pulled himself to his feet and towards the stairs. With a foggy head he struggled down the stairs, half crawling, half sliding. At the bottom of the stairs, he noticed that he'd closed the front door behind him, which was probably for the best. Sitting at the bottom of the stairs, Carlyn felt a little more clear headed. He breathed in slowly, getting the sickeningly arousing smell of Johann out of his lungs. When he felt he was clear headed enough to walk, he got up and wobbled to the kitchen.

Loren's hand-me-down guaranteed alpha-away potion supposedly wasn't hard to make, but for obvious reasons Carlyn had never needed to make it. He fumbled her cookbook down from its home on the shelves. The cookbook stood out from the rest of the kitchen. Their kitchen was a clean, modern room with stainless steel appliances and polished granite counter tops. In contrast, the book's arcane symbols, old leather binding, and heavy brass lock made it look more like a spell book than a cookbook.

It was an old tale that omegas had powers, that they were secretly witches. It was nonsense, of course, but Loren's cookbook gave Carlyn a definite sense of unease. He flipped it open delicately, scared his shaking hands might damage it and filled with an unexplained horror about what damaging it might do, and looked at the front pages.

The first few pages had been pre-marked with numbers for all the pages in the book. Some were filled in, but the lines corresponding to the back of the book were blank. There were four different handwritings in the opening pages, the first had done all the numbers and the first dozen entries before it switched to the second hand, who went back and added approximate dates to the first set of entries and dated their own. The third hand added the bulk of the entries, written in careful, tiny cursive and dated recently enough to have come from the man who birthed Loren. The fourth hand was obviously Loren's, and some of those entries had been written in the house. One was for a pain potion specifically for alphas. That one stood out as being the first entry to focus on helping an alpha.

Carlyn was sorely tempted to skim through Loren's entries, but shook his head and searched for the alpha-replant. He found it in the first section, as one of the first potions listed. It was both underlined and starred.

On the page in question, the entry itself was written three times, one for a single dose, once for a double dose, and once for making group batches. Carlyn winced and swallowed his inherited guilt. He stumbled through making a single dose, and when it was blended up, tried to swallow some. It went badly.

He heaved and threw up violently in the sink. It wasn't just the taste of it. It was like his entire body was offended by something in mixture. He went momentarily blind and thought he could feel his throat and tongue itching. It felt wrong, very wrong. And yet Carlyn tried again, a smaller sip this time. He was half sure he'd just tried to swallow too much. But less potion yielded a similar if not worse result. Carlyn found himself choking, unable to breathe with bright white spots in his darkened vision. He moved to spit the potion out but found his mouth was half numb.

Mistake! This was a mistake! he screamed in his head.

When his vision came back completely, he went back to the spell book and flipped a page. There behind the alpha repellent was the antidote. He figured if the repellent had poisoned him, the antidote should cure him. After blending up a batch, he carefully stuck two fingers in the resulting goop and brushed it on the inside of his mouth. The swelling there began to go down. Assured, Carlyn took a small sip, gargled, and spit into the sink. He only let himself linger in relief until he could breathe almost normally. Then he took the alpha repellent and headed back upstairs.

As he reached the top of the stairs Carlyn began huffing, big breaths of the repellent. It made him sick but helped counteract the smell of Johann drifting down the hall from his room. By the time Carlyn made it in Johann's room, his face was almost inside the bowl to keep his reaction down.

"Johann!" he called but received no reply. However, he did hear the shower running and under the powerful scent of pheromones he smelled cold water.

Carlyn took another deep breath of repellent and walked into Johann's bedroom. He'd never actually been in Johann's room. He'd lingered in the doorway, but hadn't been fully in the room since Johann moved in. It was different from how he remembered it. Instead of the lavish guest bedroom it had once been, it was set up much like Johann's apartment with his screen in the room's corner, his punching bag and weights in a different corner and a curtain around his bed. The smell in the room soaked through everything. With his face partially in the bowl, Carlyn picked his way through the fog of the smell and entered Johann's bathroom. Once inside, he found Johann at last, curled up naked on his shower floor, under a spray of ice cold water.

"Johann?!" Carlyn turned off the water and pulled Johann out of the shower.

The surface of his skin was ice cold from the water, but Johann was burning hot. There were strands of loose hair on his hands and on the shower floor, as if he'd pulled it out in frustration, and nail marks on his body, particularly his palms and upper arms. His lip had been bloody not long before but was now only bitten and split. Despite this obvious self-abuse, Johann was aroused. His chest was swollen, more so than it ought to have been even in heat, and he was hard. And the smell that was coming from between his legs was overwhelming.

Part of Carlyn wanted to check between Johann's legs. He was afraid that Johann had hurt himself there by accident or on purpose. But he didn't dare; he couldn't dare! He was already so hungry for him. Johann smelled so good. And his body would be relieved if only Carlyn would help him.

Inner Beast slammed into Carlyn's mind, begging him to act.

Carlyn reached for the bowl, took two fingers of the repellent and put it in his mouth. He didn't swallow it, but it just being in his mouth was enough. Forcing himself to move slowly as he put Johann down, he got up, moved to the sink and spit the repellent out. Then he dry-heaved for a minute or two before rinsing his mouth out.

Freshly disgusted by the repellent, Carlyn took some towels and wrapped Johann up in them. Once Johann was settled on the bed, he called Becka.

"Don't use the drug," he rasped when she picked up. "It's dangerous. Take it to the university and have Davis run some tests on it. If he says no, tell him Johann got injected with it and needs something to reverse it."

"Are you okay?" Becka asked. "Is Johann okay? What's in the syringe?"

"Something to induce a fake heat, I think."

"Why would I want to induce a fake heat!? We barely get through the real ones!"

"I don't know yet, Becks. I'll figure it out. Take the sample to Davis. Warn everyone with an omega. This is suspect. Don't trust it."

"Right. Bye."

Carlyn hung up, sighed, and closed his eyes. He was so tired. The thought of lying down with Johann just entered his head, when arms wrapped around his torso. He turned to find Johann up from bed, standing behind him, with his forehead pressed against his shoulder blade.

"Johann?" Carlyn called. He could feel Johann's arousal pressed up against him. The smell was stronger than ever.

"Carlyn…" Johann muttered. "Please… It hurts so much."

"You're in pain?" Carlyn turned in the omega's grasp and put his hands on either side of his face. "Where does it hurt? What do you feel?"

"Hurts," Johann moaned miserably. "Please. Make it stop."

"I can't," Carlyn brushed his thumb across Johann's cheek. "I'm sorry. Davis will figure it out soon. He's working at the university lab and -"

"Please make it stop," Johann said louder. "Just… do it."

"What?" Carlyn shifted uncomfortably. He thought he knew what Johann meant, but he was praying he was wrong. Inner Beast was mercifully silent. "Do… what?"

Johann choked on a sob and tightened his hands into fists around the fabric of Carlyn's shirt. He put his forehead down on Carlyn's chest. "Please, just fuck me. Please, make it stop."

"I… can't…" Carlyn muttered.

Johann's head whipped up to look him in the face. He was crying, his face red. "It's fine!" he said. "I don't care! It's fine if it's you. Just please make it stop!"

"I can't!" Carlyn shouted with Inner Beast. "You don't know what you're saying. I can't do that to you. Your ideals!"

"I don't care about my ideals! I just want to be fucked. Please! You. Or Lyric if you won't. Or one of your brothers. Please! I don't care! I don't care!"

"You may not," Carlyn said as he stepped around Johann towards the bed, "but I do."

Carlyn pulled back the bedsheets, took the thinnest one, and began ripping it up with his teeth. Once he had it in pieces, he used the pieces to tie Johann up. Johann was unexpectedly compliant, only whimpering sometimes and trying in vain to rub against Carlyn. Then Carlyn wrapped Johann up in the remaining sheets and placed him in bed. Kissing his forehead, Carlyn pushed back Johann's hair.

"It's going to be okay," he whispered. "I'm going to protect you. I promise."

"Please," Johann whimpered. "I need you."

Carlyn ignored him. Inner Beast whimpered too, but not for sex.

#

This was so much worse than the three days Johann had first spent with Carlyn. Johann whimpered; he begged; he was shameless. Carlyn sat with him for every moment of those three days, holding him, stroking his bare arms and legs, trying to sooth him without giving in to his pleas for sex.

Sometimes Carlyn barely knew where he was or what he was doing. When he dozed off, he woke up to himself holding Johann too tightly, allowing Johann to grind against him too much. Carlyn sometimes woke up with a moan on his lips, hungry, and needing Johann more desperately than he had ever needed anything.

Loren whipped up something to dampen his want. The potion made him groggy and unhappy, but his body went numb and didn't react to Johann's scent, wriggling and biting. Loren suggested Carlyn let Johann bite him. Alpha blood supposedly assuaged an omega's lust, a notion which vaguely made sense, given the practical reality of mating and bonding, but reminded Carlyn that omegas were supposedly witches.

The message about the danger of the drug had gone out too late for some. While Carlyn kept Johann calm at home, Lyric had her hands full with Justin, Mark and Erin all injected by Karen. Eden had been warned but missed the chance to call home before Karen got there. However, his omegas had never trusted Karen, and she only pulled out a syringe and got one of them with it, the other threatened her with a gun to make her leave. Sage's omegas refused to open the door for her, but that still left four omegas close to Carlyn sick. However, being bound with alphas, they had a somewhat easy, if questionable, out.

"You're just going to…" Carlyn was almost shocked at the suggestion.

"Of course," Lyric said over the phone. "They're my mates. My omegas. I understand… with Johann… it's fake."

Carlyn had needed to tell Lyric and his brothers about The Legion and Johann's place in it to explain why he absolutely couldn't give into Johann's pleading. They had all been shocked. Not that Carlyn had been doing shady dealings, they knew exactly the person Carlyn was, nor even that Johann was shadier than they believed him to be. In fact, they welcomed that bit of news. But that Johann wasn't, in fact, Carlyn's bond-mate shocked them to core. Only they all had bigger problems than Carlyn's love life.

"That's probably the right decision, even," Lyric went on, "even if he's asking you to do otherwise. He'll thank you for it. He might even want to… know you, be with you for real. But for my mates, this is the easiest way to help them. I asked around. It shouldn't take that long. Hopefully." She sounded unsure. "I… can't keep them tied up…"

Carlyn frowned, one arm around Johann. The omega was sleeping, knocking out by something Loren had whipped up and Josh had given him.

"If you think so."

"Some alphas have given this stuff to their omegas on purpose. They regret it. This isn't natural, Carlyn. It's not some aphrodisiac or something. It's wrong."

"I know. Hopefully, Davis will -"

"Carlyn!" Davis burst into the room, still dressed in his jacket, waving a small white box around. "I have it! We made it!"

"Davis?"

"Did he say he made it?!" Lyric screamed in relief.

"Lyric?" Davis shouted. "Yea, I've got it! I sent some to your house, too! Each needle is preloaded with the correct dose!"

"Oh, thank god! I'd rather have the antidote. Thank you, Davis! Bye, Carlyn."

"Bye, Lyr," Carlyn said and hung up the phone. "Davis. You got it done? It's only been four days."

"I haven't slept," Davis said, then laughed in a slightly on edge way. "Here, let me over-see the injection and go to bed before I start seeing things.

The injection was quick, just a prick in the arm while Johann was sleeping. Then Carlyn took Davis to bed and gave him his bear to keep him company.

"You're amazing," Carlyn said.

"Anything for family," Davis muttered into the fur of the bear.

With a kiss to Davis's head, Carlyn left Davis to sleep and returned to Johann's bedroom. When he got there, he found Loren and Josh sitting on either side of Johann, looking over him.

"How's he doing." Carlyn asked.

"His pulse is down," Loren said. "And so is his temperature."

"Really? Good." Carlyn said down on the foot of the bed and sighed. He was still wearing his clothes from four days ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago. "When do you think he'll wake up?"

"Only Davis or someone on his team would know that," Josh said. "His mouth is all bloody."

"It's my blood," Carlyn assured him.

"Speaking of," Loren said. "Here." She handed him a bottle of whiskey. "Drink that as fast as you can. This is going to hurt. I'm going to stitch up those bites."

"What am I going to do?" Carlyn asked, talking about his marred neck. Johann had bitten right over Loren, Davis, and Josh's marks.

"Nothing. Marks don't mean anything. It's just show and instinct."

"Really?" Josh asked. "What about the pheromones that get in the wound?"

Loren laughed. "It’s just asked as a… mental bonding agent. Makes you attached to them. But it wears off in a few weeks. By the time the wound heals, you don't have any of it left in your system."

"I thought it lasts forever," Josh said wistfully.

"Not so," Loren said. She was sterilizing a needle she got out of her medical kit.

Carlyn wasn't fond of that kit. Of course, that was because he only ever saw it when someone was injured. But it was alarming, all old-fashioned tools, that were brand-new, herbs he'd never heard of, and notes in tiny script. It was all housed in a leather case that looked more like a vampire slayer's kit than a doctor's bag. Carlyn wasn't sure if he wanted to go back to ignoring the kit like he usually did or keep an even closer eye on it.

"Should we go to the emergency room?" Carlyn asked.

"Nonsense," Loren dismissed. "This is how it's been done for ages. Now hold still."

Carlyn took a long swing of whiskey, then did as he was told.

The sewing wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be. At least Loren was quick with her stitches. When she was done, she rubbed her own salve for numbing pain on it, then had him drink something for the pain and something else to go to sleep, assuring him it was only half strength.

"We're all going to need a good nap around here," Loren said as Carlyn crawled into Johann's bed.

"You have no idea," Carlyn said. He could smell Johann. Instead of pheromones, Carlyn smelled the scent of what he'd begun tracking down when Johann first entered his life. Only now he knew what he was chasing. It was the smell of a threat.

#

Carlyn stood in his mother’s kitchen smoking a cigarette, drinking a glass of whiskey. He had drunk two small glasses already, and he didn’t know if he was celebrating or drowning his sorrows. It seemed a little of him doing both. He felt like a man who’d finally killed his worst enemy, on the evening before he was sent to war. Carlyn drained the glass and took another drag on the cigarette. On the counter his phone rang, and instead of answering, he tapped the button for the garage door and had it open. A few moments later, the garage door closed. Tempted to pour himself another glass, Carlyn glanced at the whiskey bottle.

“Drinking, Carlyn?” Raji asked as he came in the door.

“Yes,” Carlyn answered simply.

“Well, stop. Get cleaned up.”

Behind Raji, a small team of omegas trailed in. One of their cleanup crews pulled off duty mopping up the scene of Pride member eliminations The Fangs were working on at the moment, and brought to Karen Tracy’s mansion at Carlyn’s request.

“Shouldn’t be much to clean up,” Carlyn said, putting on his cigarette in a dish, then watching the dish and cigarette butt be swept away into a bag by a member of the cleanup crew. “I got behind her, put her in a sleeper hold, then broke her neck.”

“Never be too confident,” Raji said.

“Mhm,” Carlyn relented.

Carlyn stood still and let the cleanup crew do their work. They scrubbed and tented off an area for him to change in, changed his clothes and shoes, bagged up everything he took off, and began bagging Karen’s body.

Carlyn watched his mother disappear into a black bag with no real emotion attached to it.

“What were you doing here?” Raji asked. “Johann’s only been awake two days. Shouldn’t you be with him?”

“I came to kill her. And to get some paperwork.”

“What paperwork?”

“You’ll see at the meeting.”

Standing in the street, surrounded by the leftovers of three days of violence and chaos, Carlyn just felt tired. He turned his head when he felt someone take his arm. It was Johann.

“Come on. We’ve been here forever.”

“I need to get back to base,” Carlyn said robotically.

“You should sleep,” Johann said.

“You think your boss is leaving to sleep?” Carlyn pointed out. “I’ll shower at the base. And eat something. But I need to be awake.”

Johann frowned. “I’m going home,” he said firmly.

“Good. I want you to go home.”

#

The car ride back to the house was silent. Johann was clearly mad and had withdrawn into himself because of it. Carlyn wanted to appease him, but he had work to do. He couldn't afford to rest up at home with his harem while the fires were still being put out. He pulled up in front of the house and Johann took off his seatbelt and opened the door.

"I'll tell them where you went," Johann said bitterly, then slammed the door shut behind him.

Sighing, Carlyn cut the engine and left the car. "I was going to go in."

"Why bother?" Johann said as he entered the house. He didn't look back.

It was clear that Johann was furious. This was the last thing Carlyn needed. He'd thought after all this time, after fighting side-by-side, that they were finally on good terms, but it seemed Carlyn had crossed a line again. Nevertheless, he went up into the house after Johann.

Inside Carlyn's harem was in the downstairs hallway, hugging fiercely, the smell of tears in the air.

"Carlyn!" Josh said and broke from the group and rushed up to him.

Carlyn caught Josh in his arms and held him, then opened one arm to receive Davis and Loren.

"We were worried," Davis said.

"Are you okay?" Loren asked.

"I'm fine," Carlyn replied. "I'm going to run the cleanup efforts from the base."

"You're leaving?!" Loren cried. "You can't!"

"You just got home!" Josh exclaimed.

"I need to oversee this. Felix has probably already started on his end."

"Who's Felix?" Davis asked.

"The Legate Legion of The Lucretian Legion. I met him. And his second-in-command." Carlyn revealed the inside of his jacket so they could see the badge pinned to the left side.

His harem leaned in to see the badge, frowning, but calming.

"I can't let him think that this is his turf," Carlyn said.

Loren stood up straight and sighed. "I guess you're right," she said. "It's business. Can you check on the community center?"

"Ah, right. We had some people guarding it, but when the riots started…"

"I understand," Loren said. "And I understand you have to go." She kissed him on the side of his mouth and then looked over her shoulder. "Johann, honey, are you going too?"

"No," Johann said softly, clearly still angry.

"Well at least there's that," Davis murmured. He seemed to have gotten over his initial shock. "Let's draw you a bath, Jo." Davis gave Carlyn a quick kiss on the check, then hurried away, taking Johann's hand and leading him upstairs.

"They're mad," Carlyn sighed.

"They'll get over it," Josh muttered. "I mean, who would you be if you stayed here during this? I know you're a gang leader, but you're just not that type of gang leader. You have standing in the community. People depend on you."

Putting an arm around Loren and Josh, Carlyn sighed. "Make sure they don't hate me too much."

"We'll do our best," Loren said. "Come back in one piece."

"I will."

#

Carlyn arrived at the Fang’s base to find it full of omegas, doctors, and Fangs members all on top of one another. The doctors were trying to match victims of the riots with family or mates before they were taken to hospitals or private care. Luckily someone, Carlyn guessed it was Adison, or Raji if he was at the base, had thought to post guards to prevent the doctors from calling the police. So, with the gang overseeing them, the doctors were slowly keeping a trickle of injured omegas going out of the base. Unfortunately, that left a lot of angry betas who were used to violence with time on their hands standing around. Carlyn decided to make use of that rage and keep them busy.

But before he could send them out, he needed a list of projects for them to work on.

Carlyn made his way to his office and sat down at his desk. He sighed and had barely let the exhaustion drag him lower in his seat when Adison walked in.

“Do you have any idea how many single and beta-married omegas we have working for us outside the main base?” Adison snapped.

“Where’s your husband?” Carlyn groaned as he straightened up.

As Adison walked in, Carlyn saw Collin walk in after her. He was dressed like a member of The Lucretian Legion, however, less like a hardened soldier and more like a recruit. He wore a t-shirt and jeans in black with light, fingerless tactical gloves. Carlyn paused and frowned a little.

“It makes him feel safer,” Adison said with an edge to her voice. “The doctors are from them. The guards standing over them are just to make people feel better.”

“They certainly know their PR,” Carlyn muttered.

“This is their thing, Carlyn,” Adison hissed. “If it was Loren. Or Johann.”

Carlyn put up his hand. “I get it,” he said. “I’m just tired. How hard did we get hit?”

“Harder than I expected!” Adison said. “I thought we were mostly alphas, but I was a long way off. We have alphas on bases, running things, doing physical work…” She trailed off and shifted. An unusual thing for Adison to do.

“In leadership positions,” Carlyn guessed. “But omegas do the leg work. Smuggling, stealing, anything to do with handling the products where they can get caught by police.”

“Yea,” Adison admitted.

“We’ve gotta tighten shit up around here,” Carlyn said. “How many of our omegas are out of commission?”

“About half. I’d say about two fifths of our ground force.”

“Omegas make up, what?” He closed his eyes and thought. “Eighty percent of our network?” Carlyn asked in disbelief.

“Not of the muscle, if that helps,” Adison said. “But we are severely compromised. They work in the restaurants we use as covers, the taxis, the massage parlors, cleanup crews, nicely placed secretaries placing and losing the appropriate paperwork.”

“Stop. Please, stop.” Carlyn put up a hand. “Those riots couldn’t have been just group think. There was an underlying current.”

“The Pride,” Collins said suddenly.

“The who?” Carlyn asked.

“The Pride,” Collin repeated. “An alpha-supremacy group. Mostly a bunch of pent-up alphas without harems, angry at omega for ignoring them, and angry at married betas for taking what’s theirs, or some nonsense. They were just… internet jerks. But then they started showing up to places in real life. In groups. Hurting people. The Legion has them marked.”

“What the fuck?” Carlyn whispered. “Track them down,” he said in a stronger voice. “They want to be a gang? Welcome to a turf war. I want them burned to the ground!”

“Gladly,” Adison said. “I’ll have finished reports in an hour.” Then she turned and marched out of the door, Collin on her heels.

#

An hour came and went faster than Carlyn would have liked. Too few of the omegas made it out of the base, too little of chaos was under control.

Adison came back with Collin and Carlyn noticed he was holding all her paperwork. Maybe he wanted to be involved. That was new, because while he was aware of what Adison did, he had always stayed as far away from it as possible, just like Loren and the rest of Carlyn's harem before Johann.

Collin even looked like a different person. Angrier, more on edge. Carlyn would have liked to say he'd never seen that look before, but he had. On Johann's face, on Felix's face, once on Loren's face when she thought he wasn't looking. Was this what Johann had been trying to tell him about that first night together? What he'd been blind to? Was this what every omega's life boiled down to?

"What have you guys got?" Carlyn asked, assuming Collin was like Johann, a Lucretian Legion liaison member of The Fangs.

"Two things first," Adison said.

"The badges have a tracker in them," Collin explained.

Carlyn blinked and nodded. "Right. Yes. Felix said so. With everything, it just slipped my mind. You can turn it off with a switch hidden somewhere on it."

"Under the omega symbol," Collin said. "And there's a distress button. If you push the swords together, they can be removed. Remove one and a distress signal goes out. Remove both and it starts audio recording, assuming that… well, that no one is going to get to you in time."

"Jeez, lovely," Carlyn muttered. "Do we have a list of everyone with badges?"

"They've been told," Adison said.

"Good. What else?" Carlyn sat back in his chair as Adison and Collin sat down on the other side of his desk and began working through the mess. Raji and Becka joined them after a while and together they began putting things back together. By the end of the day, it almost seemed like things were going to be alright. They were finally getting a real working number of how much of their operation was damaged.

It turned out they had about a forty-sixty split between muscle and workers. The muscle was three-fourths alphas and one-fourth betas. Of that half the total muscle was recovering from active involvement in the riots. Of the workers, it was an astonishing eighty percent omegas and twenty percent betas. The betas here made out well, being mostly unmarried and therefore overlooked by the Pride. The omegas however, we're almost three quarters missing or injured. Some were dead, a few killed from being manhandled, a few because the experience had been too much and they had committed suicide. Carlyn wanted the attackers of their dead omegas found and brought to him alive. He wanted to deal with them using his own two hands.

His inner beast roared in approval and he let it. Blood, it chanted. Blood, blood, blood.

While the damage and anger were still very present, it felt more like they were in control, a feeling Carlyn approved of. Maybe Johann would say it was because he was an alpha. Maybe he'd understand because all Johann wanted was to control his own life. Either way, Carlyn was feeling better.

Then his phone rang, and it was Karen.

"I do not need this," Carlyn said to himself, but he raised his hand for silence and picked up the call, anyway. "Hello, Mom."

"Carlyn. Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?"

"Yes. I saw what was happening on TV and I was worried about you. I asked Lyric about you. She's the only one who still talks to me. Look, I know you run with those people she knew. Prudence's old crew. What are you doing?"

"Working," Carlyn answered, wondering just how much about him his mother knew.

"Working? Where? You're not home. I was just there."

"Why were you just there, Mom?"

"Well… To tell the truth, I felt bad about that night. The night you came over with your new omega. You were right. I do treat my omegas badly. So, I'm going to start over. I've let them all go. Paid off their apartments and everything, given them a little parting money. I'm going to start over, starting by remodeling my home to add a proper harem to it."

"Good for you, Mom," Carlyn said. He meant it to. He'd changed since meeting Johann and didn't see why his mother couldn't change too. This was the best news he'd gotten all day. If she could start over with this, maybe they could start over, too.

"And to make it up to you, I've given you a little treat. That's why I went over to your house. Only your new omega was there, so I gave it to him for you."

"Thanks, Mom," Carlyn smiled a bit and nodded. "What is it?"

"Now don't tell anyone I did this. It's top secret. There's a new drug out on a market. I have all the details about at home. It's FDA approved, and once House Resolution 183 is approved, it'll be all over the country. Things like those riots won't happen anymore. Omegas will be safe. And, as a special bonus, if you know the right people, you can get it for household use."

Carlyn was frowning now. "Wait, wait, wait. Mom. What drug? What are you talking about?"

"Go home from work, Darling. Trust me. You'll be delighted. I've got to go now. Call me, Darling. Bye!" The line went dead.

Carlyn sat for a moment, frowning and trying to make sense out of what his mother had said. "Shit," he said as he stood.

"Um," Becka said. "Not to bug you, boss, but my uncle gave me a present of this injectable for my omegas this morning. I was sort of busy, so I didn't read the whole card, but… is it… dangerous?"

"I don't know," Carlyn said as he crossed the room. "But I don't trust Karen Tracy, even if she is my mother. Don't give it to them! I'll call when I can."

"By 'your newest omega' doesn't she mean Johann?" Adison called.

Carlyn didn't answer. He just rushed out of the room towards the front door.

People were in the streets, saying that this was injustice and wouldn't just be swept under the rug. Carlyn listened to the chants, read the signs, saw the angry, hurt faces, counted the betas and alphas in the crowds. It was strange to be around so many people who felt so strongly about the world. It was like stepping into Johann's world suddenly, and it was jarring.

"Isn't this exciting?" Davis said into Carlyn's ear. "This is democracy in action!"

Carlyn blinked the sun out of his eyes and smiled. He didn't quite share the feeling, but he was living in the moment.

They marched on the capitol building, then surrounded it and chanted. People came around and passed out water. Speeches were made by passionate speakers. The police milled around, which made Carlyn nervous on principle, but the other protesters didn't seem to love them either, for their own reasons. Carlyn watched and made mental notes.

By the time the day was over, he was exhausted and sore. Loren, Davis and Josh got into her car, but as Carlyn opened the door to his truck for Johann, Johann stopped and looked at him.

"I think I'll stay," Johann said.

"Stay? Why?" Carlyn asked.

"There're rumors. An attack on the community center. I want to stay and take care of it."

"Loren won't like that," Carlyn warned.

"Loren will like her center being smashed even less. Just cover for me."

Carlyn thought for a moment, then said. "Get in. We'll go together. We'll get Raji, Becka, and Adison to help."

Huffing, Johann nodded. "Fine."

#

They headed to the house, got cleaned up from the day, then said they were headed out to The Fangs compound for a while.

It was not just Carlyn and his under-bosses that came with Johann to the community center. The Fangs loved Johann, and when they heard he had a mission for him, Carlyn had to step in to keep the entire base from turning up at the community center. Instead, he let each of his under-bosses pick two people to bring with them for backup and the team of eleven headed out together. However, even then they weren't alone.

There were twelve other people waiting in front of the community center. Carlyn began to tense, but Johann sped up his walking and met the others in front of the doors. Johann and the others exchanged a few words, before Johann turned around and waved The Fangs over.

“Carlyn, this is Felix, our Legion Legate.” Johann nodded towards the thick omega in the group's front.

He had angry gray eyes, and short cropped black hair. He, and the others in the group, were dressed in the same black tactical outfits The Lucretian Legion had on during the strike on the Fang’s base.

“Legion Legate?” Carlyn repeated.

“Commanding officer of a single legion,” Felix said.

“Second in line for Consul,” another Legion member said. A beta, bookish but strong, much like Adison. Carlyn was wary of her. “The Consul leads The Lucretian Legion world-wide.”

There was a murmur of awe from behind Carlyn. Carlyn pressed his back teeth together to keep his face as neutral as possible. He was suddenly aware he was talking to someone higher in their field than he was in his.

“Below the Consul are her Imperial Legates,” the beta went on, “the Commanders of every Legion in each country. Leading each individual Legion in an area is The Legion Legate, which for this area is Felix. I am Felix’s Broad Band Tribute.”

“My Second in Command,” Felix explained, “Taylor. And you’re Carlyn Tracy, head of The Fangs, an area gang monopolizing the criminal underground. No one would suspect a wealthy socialite and author to be the ringleader of a drug cartel and weapons ring.”

“I’ve had an interesting life,” Carlyn shrugged.

“I’m sure. You’ve come to protect your harem mate’s territory?”

“If you want to put it that way.”

Felix nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, he stopped and turned his attention out towards the road leading to the center. Carlyn followed his gaze and found a group of about two dozen coming up the road with torches in their hands.

They were alphas; that much Carlyn could tell from a distance. They smelled like anger and violence, the same smell that clung to Karen and Jackson. Carlyn wondered if that smell hung off him as well. The group marched up to them without speaking. They were less organized than the Lucretian Legion in mismatched t-shirts, cargo pants, and sneakers. But they all looked furious.

Carlyn's inner beast growled in anticipation. There was going to be blood soon.

“Get out of the way!” the alpha woman in front shouted.

“Turn around and leave,” Felix warned. “You’re not welcomed here.”

The torched-baring group chuckled darkly.

“Look at the meg,” the same alpha snarled. “Thinks he can give orders. Where’s your alpha, meg?”

“Get out of here,” Felix said again. “If you stay, there’ll be trouble.”

The alpha smirked and turned her attention to Carlyn. “He belong to you? You let him talk to people like that?”

Carlyn frowned but kept his answer measured. He was aware of how whatever he said could be twisted. “He doesn’t belong to anyone and talks the way he wants. Now do as he says before somebody kicks your teeth in, bastard.”

The alpha frowned, and the rest of her group began to growl. “There’s only one thing worse than a meg that doesn’t know their place. An alpha that puts those kinds of backwards ideas into a meg’s head. Alpha like you should be strung up.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Carlyn said. “I’d love to crack your head open. It’d make the world a better place.”

“Don’t you even see how wrong you are?!” the alpha ringleader shouted. “Omegas were made to serve alphas. It’s their purpose! Giving them all this power and independence just confuses them! Think about it. All the trouble we have nowadays. Unemployment. Suicide rates. Rape. Homelessness. Not to mention record unhappiness for omegas themselves. Things used to be good. Quiet. Ordered. Because everyone knew their PLACE!”

Carlyn stared at alpha for a moment and said the first thing that came to his mind, “You’re insane. Incompetent and insane.”

The alpha ringleader took a moment as well to soak in Carlyn’s words and then reacted. She roared and swung her torch overhanded right at Carlyn.

Reacting without thinking, Carlyn ducked back and left, but flames still caught his shoulder and the locks on that side of him. As his eyes moved from the torch to his burning body, he saw Johann beginning to move. Everything was in slow motion. The smell of burning clothes and hair joined the acidic smell of hate in the air. Some part of Carlyn was worried about how he’d land, because he had one foot off the ground and it seemed like he’d been moving backwards from the torch for several minutes.

Then his foot hit the ground and time started moving at the right speed again.

Raji was at his side, beating out the flames dancing at Carlyn’s shoulder, Becka charged forward with the rest of The Fangs at her side. Johann had already hit the alpha ringleader’s wrist, twisted the torch out of her grip and tossed it aside, before spinning on the spot, hitting the ringleader in the throat with his elbow and smashing her in the face with the heel of his hand. The flames were out in about the same time it took that to happen, and Raji slapped Carlyn on the back before rushing into the fray.

Carlyn had a choice. Follow Raji, or circle around the back. He wanted to keep near Johann, but he knew Johann could take care of himself. Carlyn took a hard turn and circled around the back of the torchbearers.

A swift kick to the back of the knees took the torchbearer farthest to back down. When he dropped, Carlyn rained punches down on him, until he was reasonably sure he wasn’t getting up. Then he launched forward, throwing punches.

The fight didn’t last long. The torchbearers were angry, but The Lucretian Legion and The Fangs made it their business to fight well. Angry punks with chips on their shoulders didn’t stand a chance. Within minutes, it was over. The Legion and The Fangs didn’t escape unscathed, but they’d seen worse. The torchbearers left fast, limping and torch-less, leaving those unconscious where they lay.

“Filthy bastards,” Felix growled. Then turned to Carlyn. “Take your people home. We’ve got patrols in the area. We’ll keep the center safe for you.”

“I can’t let you patrol our turf alone,” Carlyn insisted, despite wanting to go home and have a nap.

Felix turned on his heel and walked away, but the other members of The Legion stayed put, watching them.

“Are we going to let them do what they want?” Becka asked in Carlyn’s ear.

“We’re going to work together,” Carlyn answered in a low voice.

In a few moments, Felix came back with a small box. “Here. The leaders of each group should wear one of these on the inside left panel of their jackets.” He popped open the box to reveal several small pins with The Lucretian Legion crest on it.

“How will you know they’re wearing them,” Carlyn asked as he took the box.

“We’ll know,” Felix answered.

Then he turned and headed away, down the road towards where the beaten torchbearers had fled. The rest of the fighters went with him, including a tiny, but muscular omega girl. Carlyn noticed suddenly that she was holding Johann’s hand and was reluctant to let it go. When she finally did, their fingers trailed for one last second before she turned and caught up with her group.

Carlyn's inner beast roared possessively. Who was the girl? What was she to Johann? How long had they known each other?

In the several months Johann had been staying with them, he’d never once invited anyone over. Carlyn had assumed it was because he was deeply entwined in The Legion and maybe had no associations outside them that was safe to bring around, but now he questioned that. Maybe he simply didn’t want to share his personal life with them. With Carlyn.

But that was a question for another time.

#

Carlyn turned and had the group with him take a badge each.

“Go back to base. Get a team of four people and spread out. Keep in touch.” Carlyn offered Johann a badge, but Johann shook his head, so he closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “I have a bad feeling about tonight,” Carlyn said.

The group split up. Raji, Becka, and Adison, and the others went back to The Fangs base to get more people. Carlyn took Johann to head home and tell Loren, Davis, and Josh where they were likely to be for the rest of the night.

As Carlyn sat with his harem in his kitchen, explaining the issue, his phone rang. It was Becka.

“What’s up, Becks?” Carlyn said tiredly.

“Carlyn. There’s trouble. We need more people.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“There are riots in some neighborhoods. In suburbs. In Adison’s neighborhood. She went home to check on Collin. Some of those torch guys had broken in. They were… They had raped him. They have lists! Lists of omegas, not in an alpha’s harem. Single ones, ones in beta marriages. They’re dragging them from their homes and raping them. They’re killing betas! And any alpha that tries to stop them. They're burning down houses!”

“Fuck,” Carlyn said. He was already standing, the urgency of the moment washing away the tiredness he had felt.

Johann was at his side, nudging him. “We have to get out there,” he whispered.

“No,” Loren said softly.

Carlyn looked at her. She was on the verge of tears. Josh was standing next to her, frozen with a terrified look on his face. Davis didn’t look scared. He looked like he had shut down.

“Please don’t go out there,” Loren said.

“We have to go,” Johann said. “I’m in The Legion. He’s the head of The Fangs. We have to.” He rushed up to her and hugged her. “Stay inside. Keep the doors locked. Stay away from the windows. Keep a charged cell phone near you and packed back in the car, just in case. It is safest for you here. And if you have to leave, go to Lyric’s.”

Carlyn had to clear his throat to find his voice, but nodded. “He’s right. You’re safe here. But we have to go.”

Tears began running down Loren’s cheeks, but she was nodding.

“Keep Josh and Davis safe for us?” Carlyn asked.

Loren kept nodding.

“We’ll be back,” Johann assured her. “Soon.” Then Johann turned to Carlyn. “We have to go.”

In the car Johann called his bosses, the first time he’d done so in Carlyn’s presence. Everything Becka said was true, and it was spreading fast. They pulled into base to find it filled with people. Omegas Carlyn had never seen before were milling around, scared and clinging to members of The Fangs, especially betas. Some were shaking or crying. Some were visibly injured.

“Do we have doctors on the way?!” Carlyn shouted as he surveyed the chaos.

“They’re on the way!” Adison said as she walked down the steps. “We don’t have any sort of supplies for this.”

“Adi?” Carlyn said. “Aren’t you… Where’s your husband?”

“Locked in my office, having a mental breakdown from being gang raped. There’s nothing I do for him right now.”

“You could be with him.” Carlyn suggested.

“You need me. The Fangs need me. This situation needs me. And I need to get him a fucking doctor!” She was screaming by the end of her explanation, but then calmed down. “I’ve got him in my headset.” She lifted the headset to her personal phone from her neck. “You still there, babe?”

There was a pause of a few seconds, then Adison nodded.

“He’s still waiting. He wants a doctor and to go to sleep. Will they be able to do rape kits on all these people?”

Carlyn shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“It’s okay.” Adison took a breath and sighed. “I need to know what we need. Call my work phone if you need to reach me. I will not pick up my personal line.”

“Right. Try to pry some people from their mates. We need fighters out there. Put this place on lockdown. Guards on the doors. Authorized entry only so people feel safe.”

“Got it,” Adison said and trotted down the steps and away into the chaos in the yard.

Before Carlyn could turn to track her leaving, Johann grabbed his arm and began leading him inside. With Adison recruiting, Carlyn approving recruits, and Johann organizing recruits into units, they turned out several more teams to go into rioting areas and bring down the violence. Carlyn and Johann co-lead a team with double the number of people.

It was a long night. And an even longer next day. In total, it took three days to get things back under control. Whole neighborhoods were wiped out, burned to the ground. Alpha supremacists tagged the ruined property with slogans promoting alpha rule and omega submission. Anyone who opposed them were killed, but omegas they took a special delight in dragging out into the open and assaulting.

It wasn’t easy getting the omegas out of harm’s way. Most of them fought anyone that touched them, especially if they smelled an alpha, but The Lucretian Legion had a way of bundling them up and getting them to safety with little fuss. There was something about the way they expertly handled a panicking omega, blindly lashing out that impressed and terrified Carlyn.

During a short break in the fighting, early on the third day, Carlyn found himself sitting next to Taylor, sipping some water with her.

“You have omegas,” she said suddenly.

“Um… yes. Four. Three, not counting-”

“Johann. Yes. Four. How do the others feel about this?”

“Terrified. They didn’t want us to go.”

“Naturally.”

“Do you have a husband?” Carlyn dared to ask.

“No,” Taylor said absently. However, her eyes wandered. And when Carlyn followed them, he found Felix pouring over maps and making plans.

“Oh,” he said. Then he blinked, and sometime between closing his eyes and opening them again, he’d found Johann, sitting with the omega girl from before, murmuring together, heads bent. “I get that.”

Felix was many things, intense, driven, intelligent, but romance-oriented wasn’t one of his qualities. Maybe the omegas of The Lucretian Legion simply weren’t interested in that. Maybe they were devoted wholeheartedly to their cause.

Raji had come into the room sometime while Carlyn was distracted. He was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, frowning slightly.

"Your side is bleeding," Raji said.

"She stabbed me," Carlyn responded, pressing a hand to his side. Now that he was coming off the adrenaline of the beat down, he felt how much it hurt. Glancing down, he found the knife. It was thin and long, like an oversized needle. "With this." Carlyn nudged the knife with his boot.

Raji looked at the knife, then huffed. "Medieval stiletto knife. Italian. Good make. Made for puncturing. She was probably going for your liver."

While Raji talked, Carlyn used his free hand to get the number of his doctor up on his phone. "Well, I could beat the shit out of her, so I think she missed."

"Your liver is on the other side and several inches higher."

"She always was a bad shot."

Carlyn waited to tell his harem about being attacked until Raji took him home. He didn't need Davis and Josh fussing over him at the medical center and didn't need Loren and Johann threatening anyone. He was planning on sneaking in and getting settled in bed before saying anything, but when he got home, he found Johann leading the others through some sort of workout in the backyard.

"The fuck is this?" Raji whispered.

"No clue," Carlyn whispered back, then straightened up and walked out onto the patio. "Guys!" he called. "What are you doing?"

Loren, like the others, was dressed in brand new workout clothes that were surely bought on the insistence of Josh. The colors were surely Johann's choice, though. They were too muted to have been picked out by Josh. Loren glanced at Carlyn in her new outfit and smiled.

"Johann is going to lead an omegas self-defense class at the community center. We're testing it out to make sure it's not too intense."

"That's a good idea," Carlyn chuckled.

"What happened to you?" Josh asked. "Your shirt is all bloody."

"What?!" Loren dropped her pose and turned around. "What happened?!"

"I got a little stabbed," Carlyn admitted.

"What?!" every member of Carlyn's harem said at once.

"Who did it?" Loren hissed.

"Doesn't matter, Loren," Raji said calmly. "She's in pieces. Becka's getting rid of the pieces now. She was a Pru loyalist, anyhow, and it's better we flush the last of them out."

Loren frowned and stalked across the lawn and up to the patio. She pushed Carlyn's arm away from his side and yanked up his shirt to look at the left side of his torso.

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"About a three-inch-deep stab wound," Carlyn said. "But very narrow. She was aiming to puncture my liver like some master assassin and missed by a mile."

"By several miles," Raji said. "He'll live." He put his hand on Carlyn's shoulder in a rare show of physical affection. "I'll visit soon," he mumbled before turning to leave.

"Bye, Raj!" Carlyn called, then walked over to the nearest deck chair and dropped into it with a sigh.

Carlyn's harem sat at the table surrounding him, frowning and looking worried. Johann was the first to speak.

"Who's Pru?" he asked. "And why would there be loyalists to her that would fucking stab you?"

"Prudence ran The Fangs before me," Carlyn said. "She was older, very powerful, very ruthless. Lyric was her right-hand woman and the former lawyer to the Fang's. But Lyric double crossed her when she wanted to get clean hands, and set her up to fall, and set me up to take her place. We wiped out most of Pru's loyalists when I took over, and everyone else fell in line. Pru made enemies within her ranks. She was hard on people and seemed to hate men. There were people who were glad to see her go. But there are still some who like to see me dead for what happened."

Johann looked at Carlyn from across the table and frowned. "Are you sure you're okay?" He seemed to mean more than one thing.

"I'm fine," Carlyn said. "What about The Legion? Any news from them since the Pfizer hit?"

"The self-defense group is part of it," Josh said proudly. "A softer look, community outreach. Ears and eyes in the right places. Just like real spies."

Johann sighed. "We've become too focused on fighting lately," he said.

"Smart," Carlyn said. "A good way to avoid attention is make sure those who might have information on you have no reason to say anything."

"I'm aware," Johann said. "The Fangs donate to charity: food, baby stuff, clothes. Members give rent money to people about to be kicked out. We had people ask around. You're like Santa Claus with a gun. I'm surprised I've never heard of Pru."

"I scrubbed her from every record I could get a hold of when I took over," Carlyn explained. "I wanted to erase her from existence."

"Well, it worked. People out there don't even say her name. I'll tell The Legion to dig a bit."

"They dig, The Fangs will hear about it," Loren warned.

"I thought The Fangs, and The Legion were allies," Davis said.

"She means," Carlyn said, "if The Legion wants to keep themselves out of sight, they should be aware anyone asking after Pru will be a target."

"I understand," Johann said. Then he sighed. "Don't you think you should get in bed and rest?"

"Agreed!" Loren said.

"Me too," Josh said, looking up from his phone. "I ordered you some new pajamas for your stay at home while you recover. And some nice slippers."

"Oh," Davis said. "That's nice. Maybe I'll order you a book to read while you're recovering."

"And you have to exercise a little to keep your muscles from atrophying," Johann added, eyeing Carlyn and visibly thinking.

"All that is besides the point," Loren said firmly. "Sleep and food are most important. Come on!" She hauled him up and started pulling him towards the door. Carlyn noticed she had gotten stronger lately.

#

A couple of days lounging around the house being looked after was exactly what the doctor called for after being stabbed in the side. Thanks to his harem, Carlyn was getting plenty of rest, eating well, reading good books in comfortable clothes, and keeping his strength up with low-intensity calisthenics. He seemed to heal even faster than normal and felt clear-headed and strong. So much so that he headed out to his sister’s for drinks one evening and came back rather drunk.

When he finally made it home, the house was quiet, and he sneaked up to his room, making as little noise as he could. In his own room, Carlyn shut the door silently, gave his bear a pat on the head, and slipped into bed. It was Johann’s night with him, and Carlyn could smell him even over the alcohol clouding his head. He slipped his hand under Carlyn’s shirt to touch the soft skin just above the waistband of Johann’s sweatpants as he laid down. Head on the pillows, he breathed in Johann’s scent deeply and hummed.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Johann's calm, sleepy voice. “Get off me.”

The words, however calm, knocked Carlyn awake. He withdrew from Johann and took a breath. “I’m… so sorry.”

Johann turned over and tucked one arm under his head. He gazed at Carlyn in the dark, his features obscured and mysterious. “Do you want to visit one of the others for a few hours and come back?”

“No!” Carlyn said firmly. “It’s your night. I won’t lie here smelling like someone else. Even one of your harem-siblings. I didn’t mean to… do that.”

Johann’s hand had sneaked out and his fingers were just barely tracing over the inside of Carlyn’s wrist. “I understand. I do. You have… urges. Needs. We all do. But I can’t… we can’t…”

“I get that. You have real reservations about any personal relationship you might have with me. I’ve learned a lot. And I understand and respect your position. I never meant to imply I wanted to change your mind.”

A ghost of a smile lifted the side of Johann’s mouth, and Carlyn took a chance to move closer. Carlyn put his hand on Johann’s side, on top of his nightshirt, and relaxed.

“Thank you,” Johann said softly.

“Hm? For what?”

“For not disappointing me.”