Page 55 of Evan and the Alpha

16

Sobek

Ido not like Evan’s family. Two of the three alphas—they stink of treachery. Especially the old one, presumably Evan’s phapha. He acts like he owns Evan, and that rankles. Evan is my mate, not his. He has no rights, no say.

The other one, Scott, he is not quite as bad. But I do not trust him. He is too much in their phapha’s sway.

The third alpha—Vince, I think—is inoffensive. He seems almost at ease with Evan, although he’s surprised by this turn of events. He seems like he might be an ally.

I need to win over their phapha, though. In the hierarchy of things, the third alpha is not much of an ally, not unless I’m going to kill their phapha. I strongly suspect Evan will object to that, although I cannot, for the life of me, fathom why.

He’d be better off without his phapha. He seems almost scared of the old alpha, which is ridiculous.

All this only furthers my notion that sun spirits are very strange. I do not fully understand them. That, and the fact that Evan will be upset, stays my hand. Otherwise, I’d slit his phapha’s throat for even daring to look at my mate the way he does.

It makes me so angry. I’ve never been quite so angry in my life, but there’s cold fire snapping in my belly when this Tom looks at Evan, so cruel, so critically, and Evan just … wilts.

No omega should ever be looked at like that. No omega should ever be made to feel so bad about themselves. Omegas are sacred and wonderful, and Tom looks at Evan like he’s a piece of dirt, a bug to be crushed under his strange shoes.

Evan is pregnant. He does not need that, especially not from his own phapha.

I do not murder Tom, even though it is very tempting, especially as he keeps giving Evan that critical look as we enter the belly of the shiny metal bird they have arrived in.

Evan was nervous about coming to the ship. I can’t say I like it much more; the stench of betrayal is rife in the air, and I am not so naive as to think the humans could not just fly away with my mate and never bring him back. That would be very cruel indeed, but I do not fathom to know the minds of sun spirits. Perhaps they are angry we’ve mated and they feel the need to punish Evan, myself, and our child.

I stay at Evan’s side, on high alert for any falsehood from the humans. A sweet omega with dark eyes and dark hair and skin with a hint of gold to it cheerfully tends to Evan while we sit in a metal room, surrounded by all kinds of tablets with strange hieroglyphs on them. Evan lies on a raised platform, naked, with a blanket covering him, and he tells me one of the tablets shows his heartbeat. I watch it for a while, mesmerized as the green line dips up and down across the tablet. How strange, to see a heartbeat, instead of hearing it or feeling it. But I can see the rhythm I know so well.

Evan points to one of the other screens. That, he tells me, is our baby’s heartbeat, and that thrills me more. It’s much faster than Evan’s, the spikes and dips tight together. When I glance over my shoulder, Evan is watching it too, some indescribable emotion across his divine face.

I do not need words. I know the feeling too. I step to his side and take his hand. He looks up at me, wonder and something like relief in his eyes as he smiles fondly at me.

My mate is so beautiful and kind and wonderful. I don’t understand how his phapha can look at him like that.

“Okay,” the other human omega says with a smile. This golden omegaholds up something that looks, to me, like a magic wand, the kind Tiakka the old bookkeeper uses in magic spells. Except this one is not made of wood. It is made of a colorful material and it seems soft, smooth.

I wonder what kind of magic it performs.

Evan laughs at me when I ask. “It’s an ultrasound wand,” he says. “It lets us see the baby inside me.”

“Inside you?” I ask, feeling a bit gobsmacked. Its magic lets us peer past his skin, his organs and muscle, into the interior of him, where our baby is nestled inside him, growing.

Min, the other omega, points to one of the tablets. We see a picture, grainy and odd, but Min tells us that is inside Evan, and that is our baby. Moving. Living.

“A miracle,” I murmur in wonder, unable to help myself, and Evan laughs again. He looks fondly at his belly.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and he sounds so satisfied, so happy.

At first, I wasn’t sure how Evan would react to being pregnant. He was so insistent that he could not get pregnant. That he was “male” and that humans could not change their sex, not like we kroakka. He was so certain he could not bear children for me, but here he is, with child. He seems almost elated about it, and every day, he becomes more and more an omom. His love for our child is already boundless, but it continues to grow, infinitely.

I am a little jealous of how much he loves our baby. I worry, a little, that he has no love left for me, his mate, but he putsthat fear to rest every time he looks at me. He is grateful, as though he thinks I am a god for giving him this child.

I think the same of him and I suppose we shall continue to worship at each other’s altars. For an alpha cannot have children without an omega, and an omega without an alpha is doomed to be childless.

Still, I think he is more amazing than I am. My role in the act was small, especially compared to his; he grows larger every day, swelling up with the role he’s playing in bringing our child to life. God-work, really.

Min stabs Evan with some slender silver blades, and Evan has to clutch my hand so I don’t attack. “It’s okay,” he assures me. “She’s just taking some blood—”

“Blood!” I bellow. “He would spill your blood—”