Noel
Doc returned from the hallway, a neutral expression carefully plastered across his face. “Do I have to, like, start calling you daddy or something?”
The prospect brought great disgust to me, and I did nothing to hide the sneer that crept over my face.
“Fine. Fine.” He waved me off before motioning for me to follow him. I dutifully did so and found the room he offered to be sufficient. He gestured me in and stared at me with something like jealousy. “Captain’s a good one.”
“I’ll happily submit to the ablation if it means making him whole once more.” I nodded shortly and Doc returned the nod, his posture sinking a little, sadness clear in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have to though. It’s barbaric and unfair.”
I shrugged. “Such is the plight of what I am. Spare parts. ” The second those two words came from my lips, my entire body tensed for a moment. It’d been what Raziel told me I was. Nirem had never corrected him. What I was had no purpose other than to donate cells and otherwise, I was useless. I was spare labor, a fighter, things that alphas and betas no longer needed. I was strange to the humans and useless since I’d been spread so thin.
Doc seemed to pale at the spare parts line. Knowing what he knew of my materials, I offered him my hand and laced my fingers with his when they joined. “I’m glad that what they did helped others. That is an omega’s purpose—life. If I gave you life, then I succeeded.”
Doc’s lips parted, all pretentious bravado and perversions aside, like the naughty thing he wanted to say petered out on his tongue. “Abomination.”
I didn’t flinch away from the word but canted my head, curious. No venom lay in his tone and he didn’t meet my gaze. He spoke of himself.
“After they saved me, they treated me like an abomination. The Alignment of Divinity rose, worshipers of the Naleucians. I am neither hybreed nor blessed with a gift. I am altered human, tainted.” Doc stared at me expectantly and I’m not sure what he expected, but I pulled him into a hug, letting him bury his face against my shoulder in a childish sort of way, not that I’d ever been around any. “Even my own family. Vil and everyone here is my family, now. But you’re different. You’re blood.”
I patted his back as he shuddered. Even however distant his percentage was from mine, he still held a few percent of me. He bore omega blood. Perhaps not a womb or anything more than basic features, but he could understand what was being asked of me. “And I’m happy to know you. You please me, Doc.”
“You won’t be whole again, you know?” he said, his voice broken as he switched the topic. His throat bobbed with a heavy swallow.
“And that is the price I pay. Would it sate you to know what an alpha’s bite feels like? How I don’t care if I never am fucked again? Vil made me whole, even for a short time. I wasn’t whole before, so I’ll be used to it. Also, I was told it was a kindness for omegas.”
Doc shook his head and pulled away from me. “I can’t do that to you, Noel. I won’t. I have loyalty to the captain but I cannot—that’s barbaric.”
Doc’s admission made something warm in my belly. Despite how much I hated clinical settings, as I stared into the sterile little room with a cot, toilet, and sink, I couldn’t bring myself to panic again. The hormones coursing through my body along with whatever they’d dosed me with kept the adrenaline down, kept me stable. “And if it’s the right thing to do, sometimes a little barbarity is tolerable, no?”
Doc laughed and nodded, wiping at one of his eyes. “If you stay and I have to do that to you—you’re rooming with me. Never let Vil touch you again.”
“I thought you wanted Vil available for you to use?” I tilted my head, well aware that Doc was competition for the affections of my mate. The blood we shared alone made me trust him somewhat. I still held a strong pang of jealousy or something close to that in my heart for the affections he’d shared. Doc knew my mate better than I did.
“No. Honey. No. I want everyone available. We’re all horn dogs.” Doc sniffed and managed a smile for me. “Now go hang out in there. I’ll have some food brought to us. The whole clinic is on its own air supply, so as long as Vil stays out and you keep to yourself, we’ll be golden.”
I nodded sagely and stepped into the room, surveying my surroundings.
Eying me hastily, he paused. “And I’ll go find you some clothes.”
“Thanks.” I flinched only a little when the door shut behind me and I settled onto the bed, running clawed fingertips over my sides where the stinger had penetrated me not too long ago. The remaining wounds were tender but otherwise fully healed. Touching them sent sparks of pain that reminded me of who I was. It anchored me, so I knew I wasn’t dead. Pain was a comfort.
Before I realized it, I was asleep and curled beneath fresh blankets, taking advantage of quiet, the hum of the ship and tinker of noise beyond the door enough to reassure me.
Doc woke me sometime later with tins of something in hand, inviting me to leave the confines of the room. I counted to ten in my head as I rose to my feet and stretched, glancing around for my—I had no shoes or clothes yet to worry about and the regimen I had been programmed for so long ago no longer mattered. I finished the count by habit anyway and exited, joining him at a small table tucked out of sight of the bay windows, which I was certain had been on purpose, either for my benefit or his. People tended to bother doctors often.
When I opened the tin, I wasn’t sure what I expected, but the fare before me was foreign even to my indelicate palette. I’d eaten whatever was given to me for so very long that I rarely hesitated.
Vil had given me some sort of protein bars when I’d been sequestered in his room, water to drink and I’d not needed much else. What lay before me was a little like blue meatloaf with a side of white crumpled wet things that somewhat looked like popcorn. I glanced around for a fork and Doc gestured to a snap in the lid.
I pulled my utensil out and prodded at the blue loaf and squinted at it, trying to discern exactly what I stared at.
Doc found my confusion amusing. “It’s a protein loaf made from algae. I’d tell you it tastes like chicken, but it probably tastes worse.”
“And this?” I pushed one of the slimy clouds over and twisted my lips.
“Some sort of canned berry that grows a few systems over. They’re really high in fiber and a lot of other things. I like them. You likely haven’t met Wallace yet, but he’s the cook and does a damn fine job.” Doc hesitated as he stared at his fare. “For what he has.”
“As long as it’s edible.” I stabbed my finger into the blue loaf and eyed the yellow liquid that squeezed out. Tamping down my natural revulsion, I cordoned off a small bite onto my fork and bit down, finding the flavor—mildly inoffensive. It was a bit like eating meat-flavored cake. Salsbury steak is what it reminded me of. After a while, it was only some adulterated meat product that I took another bite of without hesitation. Still better than some MRE rations I’d had.
The world was better off without MREs, if I had any say about it.
Feeling confident, I stabbed one of the berries in the little side chamber and found the resistance to my fork unsettling, rather like stabbing into a raw scallop. Once hooked, though, I brought a bite of it to my mouth and pulled it from the fork, my tongue curling around the slippery shape. I chewed once.
“Not your thing?” Doc stared at me expectantly.
“It’s not sweet.”
“No. It’s like… Not sure what to compare it to. I’ve not had many of the common foods from Mater Terra.” Doc waved his fork before standing to get us some glasses of water.
“Tastes like chewy carrots.” I frowned but continued eating them, finding them not as unpleasant as simply jarring. I ate it all the same, though, praying I got some sort of sustenance from it. The alternative was illness, but that would be short-lived as I was notoriously difficult to make ill. “Eh. Food is food.”
Doc nodded. “We’ll have better once we get to port and restock. I think they’ll have the asteroid cleared off in a day or two now that the kanoik is dead.”
That made me puff up a little. I’d done something to help.
“I ordinarily don’t recommend sleeping on a full stomach, but please go rest. Between your ordeal and Vil fucking you into oblivion for days straight, you need it.”
I nodded as Doc took my tin and fork, nudging me to drink before I carried myself to the small shower stall in the corner of my room to rinse off before snuggling into my bed for a delightful night’s rest.
My stomach churned as I slept and knotted up, cramps rolling through my lower belly, periodically waking me to make me roll over and snuggle back. I’d recognized the sensation before, my body clearing my oviducts. It happened before my cycles, and I found it unsurprising that my tract was waking up a little behind my body. Naleucians weren’t meant for long-term cryogenic storage. We were meant to live and venture out.
A heavy growl and cramp twisted my guts, and I squirmed into a little ball, fully covering myself with a blanket before I wrapped my tail around and nuzzled into my pillow. Pain wasn’t anything new, so the sensation, while somewhat unusual, didn’t tax me, but I avoided what I could.
Stupid space meat. Stupid cycles.
But if Vil made his decision, the positive would be that I’d never have to feel the latter again. I rubbed a hand over my belly and soothed the aching tracts. That would be a problem for the next day’s Noel. That night’s Noel only had to worry about sleep.