Page 58 of Evan and the Alpha

17

Evan

For the last time!” I bark. “It’s not like that! At all!”

Dad still looks pissed, and Mom just gives me this sympathetic smile and reaches for my hand. I pull away; I’m so pissed, I might break her fingers.

They’re insisting I must be out of my mind. Must have fallen and hit my head. Got Stockholm syndrome’d or something. Anything.

Min’s psych evaluation says I’m fine. Darwin’s saying I’m fine, that I didn’t hit my head or anything. I’m telling them too, and I told them Stockholm syndrome has been disproven, but oh no, why believe the guy who almost minored in psych? What the fuck do I know anyway. Not like I’m a psychiatrist or a doctor or anything.

Dad looks away, grunting. He looks even angrier now. Mom pats my arm. “Evan, it’s okay. You can tell us.”

She leaves out the customarywe’re your parents.

I bite back an acrid reply. I stopped believing I could tell them anything, everything a long time ago. Dad’s still not happy I’m gay, for fuck’s sake. I mean, sure, he didn’t kick me to the curb, but there’s a lot of passive-aggressive, almost snide remarks, and there were so many rules. Like I was never allowed to bring a boyfriend home. Scott and Vince could bring their girlfriends home, but Dad didn’t want me “shoving it” in his face. When that rule was lifted, it was that I couldn’t let a boyfriend stay the night, and we were supposed to act like we were fucking monks orsomething—no kissing, no hugging, no hand-holding. Meanwhile, Scott can practically make out with his girlfriend at the dinner table.

I mean, I can get why he’s so pissed now—he’s had a hard time accepting I’m gay, I’m into other guys, so the whole “mated to a (male) alien and undergoing some kind of weird feminization thing and now pregnant!” is probably a lot for him to get his head around.

But he could try a little harder. I mean, it’s my decision. My life. My heart, my body, and I can fucking do what I want. That he can’t just love me unconditionally says a lot more about him than it does about me.

So. No. I know there’s a lot I can’t tell my parents. I told my mom a lot more stuff for a lot longer, because she’s always been the sympathetic parent, but it always managed to get back to Dad, and there’d be another huge fight. I got sick of that, so I stopped telling either of them anything. Or at least as much as I could.

That got me labeled the “bad” child—I don’t think either of them get how they made me into the bad child. It wasn’t that I wanted to be. It was that I had to be, to protect myself. I had to lie to them, I had to skulk around and do dodgy things, because if I just straight up told them or asked for whatever I needed—a ride over to my would-be boyfriend’s, maybe—then I was leaving myself open to attack.

Mom gives me another one of those smiles. “Evan …”

I meet her eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”

Her smile tenses at the corners.

Dad shakes his head. “You can’t have possiblywanted that,” he grumbles.

Mom pats my arm again. “It’s all right, Evan. We’re here to help. You can tell us—”

Why the fuck won’t they just believe me? So I wanted the crocodile alien’s dick. What is so utterly unfathomable about this? “I wasn’t forced,” I huff, catching Mom’s gaze. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

Mom sighs. Dad sneers. “You told your brother they tried to sell you.”

I shift uncomfortably. “Well, yeah. That was at first, but then I asked them not to, and then Sobek didn’t sell me.”

“They keep sex slaves.” Dad stares at me. The implication is clear: do the kroakka have any idea what consent is?

“You don’t have to protect him,” Mom says. “You don’t have to be scared. Scott’s ready to file a report, and—”

“There is nothing to report!” I cry. “You saw Min’s report, my psych eval—I’m fine. Why can’t you just believe me, instead of insisting that Sobek, I don’t know, raped me or something?”

Mom winces at the word. I glare at her. “I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t forced.” In fact, I fucking started it, but I’m not about to tell them that. “It was consensual.”

Dad shakes his head. “Evan—”

“And I’m not crazy or high or scared or anything else, so just deal with it!” I got railed by a crocodile-man on a strange planet, Dad. Fucking learn to live with it.

My parents exchange worried glances. “Did you consent to the change?” she asks.

I blink, almost startled. I stare at her.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t even aware of the change. Like, not until it was sort of too late. Like, I knew on that weird the-body-knows level, but not … consciously. I knew, but I hadn’t perceived it or really processed it. And by the time I did process it, by the time I did accept it or believe it, it was a bit too late; I was mated and pregnant.