Page 48 of Phoenix Chosen 3

Airos goes back inside. Jackson is staring intensely at me. It’s like he’s waiting for me to affirm what he’s just told me, but Idon’t know what to say. At first, I’m in disbelief—he’s an omega. How could he not be gay?

But does hehaveto be gay? Was there anything in the prophecy that said all of the omegas would end up mating with their guardians? Maybe because Jackson is from Earth, he’s a straight omega. But he is pregnant…

What a mindfuck.

“Alright,” I say a little awkwardly. “We should go inside.”

As I turn to leave, Jackson grabs my arm. “Hey,” he says, his voice serious. Defensive. Almost angry. “I’m telling you, I’mnotgay.”

“I heard you, dude,” I say, shaking his hand off. “Sheesh.”

The cave looks almost the same as we left it, except where the rats and other creatures had made their dens. The place is well-hidden. None of Kalistratos and Alyx’s plunder is missing or touched. Scraps of tattered fabric lay in the dirt on the cave floor, undisturbed from when Kalistratos had altered Alyx’s old cloak for me to use on the road. The empty earthenware cups and wooden plates we used for our last meal before leaving the cave are still on the rock slab table.

Kalistratos is next to the pile of loot, prodding at it with his foot. I go to him and slip my hand around his waist. He quickly hides the frustrated look on his face with a smile.

“Rats ate the food stores,” he says. “Did you see them? They were as big as cats.”

“No sign of Alyx?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nothing. No one has returned here since we left.”

“I’m sorry, Kalistratos. I know you were hoping to find him here. I was too.”

“We are back to… How do you say it? The first square.”

“Square one.”

Jackson is sitting against the cave wall rummaging through his bag. He pulls out a pair of over-the-ear headphones, the cheap kind with the adjustable metal headband that they used to include free with portable CD players. The wire gets stuck on something inside the bag and he tugs at it like a fisherman trying to reel in a catch. With a frustrated yank, it pops loose. He stares at the neutered headphones, their plug dangling uselessly with no hole to mate with, and with a sigh, tosses them aside onto the ground.

A connection forms in my brain. “Oh shit,” I say. “That CD player was yours!”

Jackson looks up at me. “You saw my player?”

“A Sony DISCMAN, right? It was locked away in a chest in the Aelonos treasury like the goddamn crown jewels.”

“I traded that thing away on my second day in this hellhole. Managed to get a sack of grain for it. I was so damn hungry.” He laughs. “If I’d known someone was gonna treat it like a millionbucks, maybe I could’ve gotten something better. Turns out, a sack of raw grain kind of sucks when you have no idea what to do with it. You know what I ate for a week? Soggy, pounded gruel. It was like a mouthful of shredded, wet cardboard.”

“The last time I saw one of those players was when I was a kid,” I say.

“I got that one in the fourth grade. Gift from my old man. Never could get rid of it. Well, until now, I guess.”

Jackson unzips the other pouches and turns his bag over. Out falls a small first-aid kit, some clothes, his wallet, a vape pen, and a couple of AA batteries. He gives the end of the vape pen a suck.

“Hold on, rewind a second,” he says, exhaling a cloud of syrupy vapor. “You saw my player in atreasury?And just what were you doing in there?” He looks around at the cave. “You know, this place looks a hell of a lot like a thief’s den.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Airos says.

“Breaking and entering!” Jackson says to me with an annoying grin.

“And we never did it again,” I reply. “Anyway, we weren’t fucking robbing a bunch of grandparents of their food and medicine.”

“Hey, like I said, I feel like shit about that. But I was desperate.” He takes another pull on the vape, but it fizzles out mid-suck. Dead battery. “Aw, come on.”

“What is that incredible scent?” Kalistratos asks as Jackson exhales his puff. “It’s like… By the Gods, it smells likeCoke.”

“Caramel vanilla,” Jackson says. “But if you’re talking about a different kind of coke…”

“He’s not,” I say.

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