Page 39 of Flight of the Omega

XVI

JP had plotted his escape.His father had kept him under lock and key, pretty much under twenty-four/seven surveillance, which had made it hard to plot, let alone actually escape. Add in the fact that JP was toting around thirty extra pounds or so—most of it egg—and moving like a slug these days, and escape seemed almost impossible.

But it was a nagging feeling, tugging at the back of his mind, his heartstrings. He had to get out of here if he was going to survive. He had to get out of here if he was going to lay his eggs and raise his chicks in peace.

He’d always known it, but it had been clearer over the past week or so. His father had no regard for him—and no regard for his chicks either. The way William had talked about JP’s mother had always bothered him, but now he saw it clearly: they weren’t even people to William. Just unthinking animals who wanted nothing more than to breed over and over again.

JP didn’t know his mother. He’d never met the bird. JP had been an egg from the last clutch his mother had ever laid; he didn’t know when his mother had died or what his mother had died of, just that he’d died. All of JP’s siblings—if he’d ever had any—were also dead.

That was … foreboding. That JP had survived as long as he had was something.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d survive, not if he stayed under the watchful eye of his father. In about four weeks, his father would take the eggs away to be incubated. To deal with the depression Dr. Vogel warned about, William figured they’d simply inject JP with that damn heat-inducing serum, then stud him again. Then he could lay another clutch. Lather, rinse, repeat.

JP thought forced breeding, forced pregnancy, and then losing the clutch over and over again sounded miserable. His father didn’t care what he thought or felt. He was just a brainless bird after all; give him a cock or a belly full of eggs and he’d be happy.

Which … explained a lot. Why his father had never given him comfort after he’d lost his clutches. Why his father’s solution to that had simply been to put him back in heat. Why his father didn’t recognize the signs of distress in an omega. JP had lost feathers. He’d stopped eating and sleeping for weeks. And nobody had given a damn.

Dr. Vogel didn’t seem to like the plan, at least. She’d protested on his behalf several times, talking about lovebird syndrome and lost-clutch depression. She talked about how forced matings were hard on omegas, caused a lot of distress, and JP slowly lined up his own behavior, his own symptoms with what she said.

He had lovebird syndrome, badly, and he’d suffered lost-clutch depression each time he’d lost a clutch. He was distressed by mating. Actually, he was in a constant state of distress these days, he felt, but nobody wanted to listen to a bird. What did he know? He was ruled by instinct—fuck, lay eggs.

If only it were that simple. If only he didn’t have to deal with all these … feelings. Emotions.

But the fact remained he had feelings and emotions, and he had to deal with them, even if no one else believed he had them. Even if no one else believed they were real. Dr. Vogel said they were real, and that was something. She was a doctor. She was a vet. Jack trusted her to take care of the flock, and Jack cared deeply about his flock, even if he didn’t care much about JP.

That was another problem, one JP couldn’t risk thinking about. JP had made up his mind to leave, to escape during the Rose Plate. It would be chaos, with so many birds and people around for the event. JP figured it was his best chance to disappear. Leaving his mate behind hurt, but Jack hadn’t shown him any inclination that he wanted to be involved, that he wanted to be mates.

So it made sense to leave. Felt easy, even.

But just last night, Jack had been so nice to him, and JP was upside down again. He wanted his mate, badly. He wanted to beg and cry and throw himself at Jack’s feet, swear on his life that he’d love Jack and only Jack forever. Jack had been tender, and he’d looked at him with adoration and even pride, and for the first time in a few weeks, JP had felt good about himself, about his pregnant body. Mostly, Burr had just made him feel awful, and his father had simply ranted about how if JP wouldn’t work as a brood omega, then once he lost the “egg weight,” maybe he could run. Probably not.

Both of them had made snide comments, had looked at JP like he was disgusting. Worse, he felt it when they looked at him like that. He’d been waxing and waning between feeling ravenous and having no appetite at all. He knew he wasn’t taking care of the eggs—his chicks—very well, but he didn’t feel like he could control it. One minute, he was wallowing in self-sorrow, miserable about not having a mate, about Jack abandoning him; about how his father had always treated him like some doll, a toy, something he could play with and throw away as it suited him; and how all the alphas he’d had treated him the same way—trash, something unfeeling, unthinking. And he’d start to think it too—he must have been unlovable. That was why Jack hurt him, refused him, why the other alphas had left him too. It was why his father treated him like he was nothing. It was why his mother had died and left him at the mercy of these wretched alphas.

There was no comfort in anything when he had those thoughts, because there was no one to turn to. His mother was dead, his father had never cared, and all his alphas were gone. He felt so alone. Blankets were soft and warm, but someone had taken all of them away. Sleep eluded him. Food was all he had left, so he’d steal down to the kitchen and try to get what he could from Duckie, who chided him but let him pick at samples and nibble at this and that, and then he felt worse after, because Burr and his father were right to look at him like he was disgusting, like he was sick.

Dr. Vogel said everything was normal when she examined him, except, maybe that he wasn’t sleeping and that he was having severe mood swings. His father only used that as ammunition to argue that JP couldn’t take care of the chicks, that he wouldn’t mind the nest once the clutch came.

No, the only way out of this was to escape. So JP would. He’d pretend to faint just before the finish, and his father would order him back to the house. Dr. Vogel would be called. There would only be a couple of people with them; his father wouldn’t be able to spare anyone to look after one bird, not when the race was finishing and everyone was occupied with the winners and crowning them. His father would have to go down and hand out medals and trophies. Crowd control would be at its maximum, so every hand would be needed—the ranch hands and grooms to keep the birds calm, the others to guide people out of the yard safely, so no one got trampled.

During that chaos, Dr. Vogel would send whoever was with them away, to tell his father that JP was delivering the clutch. If there was more than one attendant, Dr. Vogel would drug the other—quick and easy, a powerful sedative to make them sleep.

Then they’d escape. JP would hide in the back of the cab while she drove her pickup past the gates. She’d tell the guards that she’d forgotten some tools and she had to go get them.

And then they’d drive. Where, JP didn’t quite know. Not far enough that it would be suspicious for Dr. Vogel when she returned. She said she had a friend that would take him, drive him further away. He didn’t know if he trusted that, but it was the best he had, so he’d have to work with it, he supposed.

He felt so sick while he stood in the booth with his father, watching the racing going on below. He felt sick and weak and dizzy and awful. His head was spinning. He didn’t think he’d have to fake fainting; he felt like he honestly might just pass out. A few of his father’s friends had given him strange looks; others had looked at him like he was a cockroach. They had no sympathy for him. He’d gotten himself into a mess and now he was going to suffer, and they thought he deserved it.

Burr was in the booth with them, and he squeezed tight to JP, like an alpha protecting his omega, and JP wanted to die. He could smell Burr, and his head hurt, flashing back to those mornings in the trees, where Burr had touched him, even when he’d asked him to stop. Even when he’d said no. He wanted to scream.

“The final lap!” the announcer boomed in the loudspeaker, shaking the entire platform. JP kept vibrating long after the voice had faded. The speaker crackled and hissed, and he winced.

“Should he be up here?” someone asked his father, casting a backwards glance at him. The wind whisked by them, fluttering the bunting on the railings of the booth.

William waved a hand. “Good for him to be out and about,” he said.

JP glanced around, then started to rock on his heels. He’d never been a very good actor; he hoped he could make it convincing.

“Hey,” Burr said, turning to him as he rocked into him.