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“T-thank you,” I stammer.
“Are you alright?” he said.
I touch the side of my neck where the frog’s blade was.There’s a thin scratch, but nothing worse. My heart is pounding, but I find I’m able to get it under control. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in a life-or-death situation—I used to work security at a gas station and had to deal with my fair share of armed robberies.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Alyx hops over, using the dead frogs as stepping stones. “We should leave, Kalistratos. Before more show up.”
“Right.” He gives me a salute with his fingers. “Well, good luck.”
The two of them leave the path and start into the forest, and I hurry after them, slopping barefoot through the sticky mud.
“Wait, you’re not leaving me behind,” I protest.
“Well, you’re certainly not coming with me,” Kalistratos says.
“But you rescued me.”
He gestures to the cat. “It was more his idea. Just go back whichever way you came from.”
“Oh, okay, real easy,” I say. “I’ll just ask the damn fiery bird hallucination to come and haul me back to planet Earth.” I throw my hands into the air. “Take me now!”
Kalistratos and Alyx both stop.
“What did you just say?” Kalistratos asks, looking at me. “Fiery bird?”
“I’ve been seeing this flaming chicken for weeks,” I say. “I had one more big hallucination and boom, I was here.”
The way he’s staring at me makes me feel like I just admitted my insanity, and I guess I did.
“Coincidence?” Kalistratos says to Alyx.
“When it comes to the Great Phoenix, nothing is ever a coincidence,” he replies. “The question is why.”
“Phoenix?” I say. “That’s what the frog called you, isn’t it?”
They ignore me.
“Better bring him to the hideout,” Alyx says. “I’ll go on ahead.”
“You’re leaving me with him?!” Kalistratos exclaims. “What if he’s a soul reaver in disguise?”
“You know you’ll just slow me down, Kalistratos,” Alyx says. Then he looks at me again like I’m the weird one here and bounds away into the forest.
Kalistratos sighs and glances at me from the corner of his eye. He’s keeping his distance from me. What am I, radioactive?
“Mind throwing me a bone here?” I say. “What just happened? What the hell is a Great Phoenix and what the hell is an omega?”
“Gods,” he mutters. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Not a fucking clue.”
“We’ve got a long walk ahead of us and plenty of time to explain. But first, we’d better get you some sandals.”
I’m still barefoot, ankle-deep in the mud. I’ve almost gotten used to it. Kalistratos backtracks to the dead frogs, and I watch as he gathers materials off of their bodies. Soon he has several strips of leather and long laces cut from their clothes and belongings, and using a thorn plucked from a nearby plant, he stitches it all together into a pair of sandals very similar to the ones he has on. It all takes him less than ten minutes. I’m stunned. It’s a level of casual handiwork and craftsmanship that I’ve never seen before. I put them on, but Kalistratos has to show me how to tie the laces. He kneels in front of me to do it, and I feel like a dumb kid instead of a grown-ass twenty-five-year-old man.
As we walk, Kalistratos gives me a crash course on the differences between alphas and omegas, and it leaves my head spinning. Gay relationships here are the norm, and what really breaks my brain is learning that alphas canimpregnateomegas. Yeah. Men can get pregnant. So thewhole thing with the breeding line had nothing to do with some weird frog biology and everything to do with weird biology in general.
