Are We There Yet?
Riot
ThemodifiedJeephadseen better decades, but Lilac maintained it with the kind of obsessive care that kept vehicles running long past their expected lifespan. The wheelchair lift mechanism in the back was a testament to her mechanical skills and her devotion to Granny Lu—reinforced steel and carefully calibrated hydraulics that could handle the rough terrain and decaying roads of the Static Zone.
What the vehicle wasn’t designed for was transporting an Omega whose scent filled every cubic inch of enclosed space with the kind of biological imperative that made Riot drool. He’d taken his suppressants forty minutes ago, right before they’d loaded Cass into the backseat. A double dose from the stash he’d retrieved from Ken—the good stuff, medical grade, the kind that should have knocked his system back to baseline within fifteen minutes.
They weren’t doing a goddamn thing.
This doesn’t make sense.He shifted in the passenger seat, trying to find a position that didn’t press his still-hard cock against the seam of his pants. He’d been hard since the stairwell, and the ache had long since passed uncomfortable and settled into genuinely painful.The suppressants always work. Even when they’re cutting it close, even when I’ve pushed past the usual timeline—they work.
But nothing about Cass’s effect on him made sense from the beginning.
Just climb in the backseat and finish what you started. Lilac can fucking deal.
“How much longer?” Cass’s voice drifted from the back, slightly strained.
“About two and a half hours,” Lilac said, navigating around a pothole that would have swallowed a smaller vehicle. “Maybe three if there is corporate transport moving through. The roads get worse once we’re deeper in the Static Zone.”
Riot didn’t turn around. If he looked at Cass right now—flushed and uncomfortable and still smelling like everything Riot wanted—he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
He was going to lose his fucking mind.
“Where are we... where exactly are we going?”
“The Prairie Null Collective,” Lilac answered. “It’s our settlement in the Static Zone.”
“What’s Null mean?”
Riot shifted to angle himself toward the backseat, keeping his eyes carefully on the headrest instead of Cass’s face. “You know how everyone’s either an Alpha, Beta, or Omega?”
“Yes?”
“Nulls are people who aren’t any of those. They don’t have a designation at all.”
Even without looking directly at him, Riot could feel Cass’s confusion radiating through the car. “That’s... that’s possible?”
“The designations aren’t natural,” Riot explained, trying to focus on the words. “They existed before, but they were rare. About seventy years ago, a virus called Syn-V-7 spread globally and activated designation expression in almost everyone.”
“But not Nulls?”
“Not Nulls,” Lilac confirmed. “They weren’t affected by the virus. They don’t produce pheromones, and they can’t detect them either.”
“But you can smell...” Cass trailed off, confused.
“I’m not a Null. I’m a glitched Alpha.” Lilac’s voice was matter-of-fact. “The same program that made Riot’s glow destroyed my ability to produce pheromones. But I can still smell them just fine. I just live with the Nulls because...” She shrugged. “They don’t care that I’m broken.”
Cass was quiet for a long moment. Riot risked a glance at his face and immediately regretted it.
Cass gripped the door handle, his face flushed, sweat beading at his temples despite the cool air from the vents. His Elysian robes had fallen open slightly, revealing the bandages on his chest, reminding Riot that theonlything Cass was wearing were those robes because his underclothes were too ruined to put back on.
God, Riot wanted to lick him so fucking bad—
Riot wrenched his gaze forward, his whole body rigid with the effort of not climbing over the seat.
“So...” Cass’s voice was careful, halting. “So designations aren’t... they’re not part of divine design? They came from... from a virus?”
“They came from the Gensyn Corporation,” Riot said, forcing the words through gritted teeth. “The Syn-V-7 retrovirus was one of their experiments. They distributed it as a vaccine.”
