Seven frowned. “Not wrong. Your scent is unmistakable to us. To Raiden, you are like a balm to his soul and a Viagra to his dick.”
Raiden flushed bright red. “Seven!”
He shrugged. “It’s true. She’s—”
Finlo growled from the doorway. “She has a name, Beta.”
Seven huffed. “Apologies. Naja is obviously a half-blood. If her Manix half is the latent half, how would she even know?” He turned to me. “You didn’t grow up in our society, learning our rules, experimenting with your abilities. But my nose, it’s not wrong about this. I swear it to you. You are the last female Omega Manix on the planet.”
It was hard not to be swayed by how sure he seemed. I looked around at them again, each one earnestly sincere. I walked over to the bookcase, pulled out my copy of the bible and grabbed the small bottle of tequila from behind it.
I had a feeling I was going to need a drink for what came next. “Say I believe you, that I’m the last Manix Omega female blah-blah. What does that even mean for you guys? For me?”
Finlo sauntered toward me until I was nose to chest. “It means you can impregnate our male Omega.”
Say what?
5
Raiden
Naja took a huge step away from Finlo. “Woah, no one is impregnating me, Gigantor.”
Finlo’s lips twitched. “I didn’t say anyone was impregnatingyou, Tiny. I saidyoucould impregnate Raiden.”
I watched her eyes grow real wide, and slow blink. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. That’s not how nature works. Maybe you guys have spent too long in the mountains surrounded by dicks all the time, but pregnancy is usually a female thing.”
I shook my head at her, stepping closer, drawing her attention. “Not with Manix. It is why we are all but extinct. Females do give birth, but they can only give birth to one offspring every nine months. Their biology is similar to that of humans really, one egg once a month. But female Omegas, they can produce up to ten eggs during a heat cycle. They do not have the strength to carry that many offspring to term at once though. That's where male Omega Manix come into the picture. Our physiology is different; it’s stronger, better equipped to carry the load that half a dozen cubs would be.”
She was still frowning. “But you don’t have a vagina.” She paused. “Do you?”
This was simultaneously embarrassing as hell and funny as fuck. I never thought I’d have to explain this to someone outside our society. It sounded preposterous, and even to the younger members of Manix, it was an urban legend. “Uh, no. I don’t have a vagina. I have a secondary urethra that extracts the eggs, and a womb for gestation.”
She swigged down more tequila. At this rate, she was going to be shitfaced by the time we got to the real issues. “Then how do you give birth?”
“In the olden days, it was a ritualistic thing performed as a Pack, involving daggers and stones and blessing chants to the Goddess. Today, we would just call it a Caesarean section.”
She was shaking her head softly, over and over, like she couldn’t stop. She slumped back onto her couch. “I still don’t understand.”
Seven huffed. “It’s not really that hard if you stop being so fucking human. You two fuck during the heat. He steals the eggs with his super sucker dick. We fuck him and fertilize the eggs in what is one very long and dirty orgy. He grows some cubs. In four and a half months, we cut him open, deliver our young, and we are finally a family.”
Gatlin growled. “For fuck’s sake, Seven.”
She was silent for a long time, and I could see the information bouncing around in her head. Damn, she smelled so good, she made my mouth water. My dick ached and she wasn’t even in full heat yet. It would be unbearable then.
She finally slid her eyes to Seven and gave him a sour look. She was looking a little more chilled out—all the tequila probably. “I get the logistics, asshole. I don’t understand what my part in this is. Do you just want me to donate eggs? I mean, I don’t think I have this heat thing that Seven mentioned.”
There was an audible grunt in the room, and Gatlin stood. He sauntered over in that way he had that made my dick impossibly harder, until he was standing in front of her, slightly stooped so he didn’t look like he was looming.
“You are nearly in heat now, Naja,” he murmured softly. “You’ll know because your skin feels hot and tight, and nothing cools it down. Your body clenches in need, and no matter how much you touch yourself, it doesn’t ease. The sound of my voice right now is making you so wet; we can all smell it. You’re responding to my Alpha pheromones, and Raiden’s Omega scent. You don’t ovulate like other humans, or even other shifters. It will come only once a year and it is excruciating and bloody and you feel like you want to die. Mating during the heat eases the pain and duration.”
She swallowed hard, and I saw goosebumps spread across her warm skin like wildfire. “Irregular periods are a sign of trauma. It wasn’t that unusual.”
My eyes whipped to Finlo, and he mouthed, “Trauma?” as I felt my hackles rising instantly.
Gatlin quelled his Alpha response to the little Omega’s statement, which was exactly why he was our unofficial leader. He kept a cool head when he wasn’t dealing with the Legion, and he saw things from alternate perspectives. He shook his head at her. “No, it is because you are Manix. And an Omega at that. Something we were so sure was gone from the world that you may as well be a unicorn.”
He stepped away, but she followed him like she couldn’t help herself. I resisted the grin because I knew what that meant. We had her, at least physically. Now we just had to convince her head and her heart that we were the best option for her. We could do it.
