Page 1 of Alpha Talk

Chapter One

Cody

I hated spring and summer. Any day where the sun was still yapping its jaws at seven in the evening was a day I wish I lived somewhere else right then. When I was younger, I dreaded winter. It was cold outside. It was cold inside. The cold gnawed at my bones and organs. Only now, decades removed from what the Raven Hollow Pack had once devolved into, I preferred the cooler, darker months. Summer made me itchy under my fur. It left me restless and sometimes agitated with others. Micah liked to joke that maybe I had reverse season depression, but I didn’t think that was it. The dark was safer.

At least that’s how I felt when I opened Dark Soul last year. Micah and I had lived on nearly every continent since the Raven Hollow War ended. It got worse once the girls grew up and we ran out of babies who needed foster care. It was as if the adrenaline of those days crawled into our cells and lived there. Moving around made Micah’s support group complicated but he made it work everywhere we lived. He mostly hosted online and trained other qualified alphas to lead their own groups all loosely laced together through his organization: Alpha Talk.

A year ago, we found ourselves back in the Raven Hollow Wolf Pack Territory on a whim. I missed Silas – my friend and fellow babysitter from the war – like part of my soul had been carved away. We owned what Micah called ‘a summer house’ there but this time it was to be an all-year house. As restless as our cells were, Micah and I agreed it was time to attempt to put down roots again. Maybe we’d gotten our ‘spiritual zoomies’ out of our system now or maybe this was just another pitstop on the way to wherever we were actually going.

Micah had become a certified psychologist less than a decade after the war ended. I dabbled in various online classes while raising the girls, but nothing really stuck with me. It was as if the only way my nervous system stayed regulated was flittering from one thing to another – one obsession to another. Raising our girls and caring for the various foster kids that found their way in and out of our home over the years had grounded me in ways nothing else did. I had a love/hate relationship with schedules but moving from one thing to the next with our kids kept me sane.

As time and research poured into our lives, we discovered that we weren’t the only ones who showed signs of whacky nervous systems after the war. It was as if a whole generation of us were just broken and on edge. Of course, that didn’t apply to everyone. Everyone healed at different paces and in their own ways, but the evidence was there. That’s how we ended up back in the territory of my birth. Sure, we found kindred spirits all over the world. Micah traveled wherever Alpha Talk was needed to set up support groups and networks. He did his best to prevent anyone else from turning out like Brone, Floria, Uriel, Grady ‘Jeb’ Moore, Bram, and so many other nefarious names that stayed with global consciousness in bad ways. He was good at it too. Though, it didn’t hurt that he was a member of an off again/on again boyband. Though, calling him, Xander, and Jonah boys now felt like calling a t-rex a chicken. There was nothing boyish left in the guys.

While Happy Omega Magazine and other publications dubbed Dark Soul the ‘omega’ company to Alpha Talk it was all a bunch of baloney. Dark Soul wasn’t about being anything in particular – gender/creed/ABO status. None of it mattered. It was all about nervous system regulation for those of us who needed chronic and continuous upkeep. Part meditation club, part gym, part ‘found family’ if that’s what someone was lookingfor – we were always exploring new ways to calm down the pieces of us that never came back from the war. Sometimes it was as if a piece of me stood there in the woods where they kidnapped Micah, still screaming for him even though he was right beside me.

Looking down at the pixelated baby test, I knew I was going to need the family I built up at Dark Soul more than ever. There was a baby there in a bright green blanket. I never could keep them straight. Which color test was for what, but I knew enough to know that the baby meant you were pregnant.

Since our twin girls, Coda and Michelle, were born all those years ago we prevented conception. We went out of our ways to do so: birth control, condoms, and of course, Micah’s recurring vasectomies. We tried so hard for a long time to conceive our girls but a pregnancy during war left me sucked dry. Even now, my fingers trembled at the thought of undergoing the process again. Only, I had decided that I wanted to try again. That’s how we ended up back here.

Micah got his reminder that it was time to check to see what he was shooting (blanks or babymakers), and I said no. Well, I didn’t just say no. It was a weeklong discussion about whether we really wanted to try it again. Micah loved being a dad and I didn’t mind all the post-pregnancy parts of being a parent.

“I think it would be different this time,” I had told Micah. “I think my nervous system isn’t as whacked out. I think that time has done some good. I’m not saying it’ll be easy and if it’s too much for you, we won’t. This is something we have to be all in on.”

“I won’t be learning to use a hand this time,” he held up his prosthetic.

Journalists loved to ask me if I forgot the hand wasn’t his natal hand. They’d ask if he touched me with it during sex or if he jacked off with it. Once I bit one of them. Took a real chunkout of him. He was an alpha douche who thought since Micah was famous, we deserved no privacy. I almost went to jail for it but took a big enough chunk out of his arm that every omega might be warned away from him. In the end, no one pressed charges because he didn’t want to admit to what he asked me. The answer to the first question was easy. No, I never forgot. Not because Micah didn’t excel with the prosthetics over the years but because neither of us could forget how it happened. Why forget? Those who forgot history, sweeping it under the rug, were doomed to repeat it and I never wanted to see another Brone rise to power. So we remembered and Micah flew all over the world to help people who lost their hands adjust to what their lives might look like.

That was my point. We regulated ourselves through endless ‘community’ service. We found comfort in ensuring that others were okay as if we could send that hero energy back in time to ourselves when we needed it the most. Hell, maybe that’s how we survived those days because, looking back, neither of us know exactly how we got through them.

In the end, Micah agreed that we should try the whole pregnancy thing again. The girls were great. Grown, with their own children and grandchildren now but great kids still. We hadn’t passed our historical injuries onto them. After many late-night conversations, it was agreed that we’d move back to my birth pack where my best friend now leads with his mates. It’s where we had the most support, after all.

Conceiving wasn’t easy this time either. After a few months of romping all over our ‘summer house’ we decided not to focus on trying. Micah went back to work at the local Alpha Talk, and I opened Dark Soul. Silas and I argued a lot over the name of my company. He thought calling it Dark Soul would draw the wrong sort of attention. I fell in love with the name. Dark didn’t mean evil. Dark meant hidden and most of us with dysregulatednervous systems had to hide it. I wanted to build a place where we didn’t and where we could come to regulate. He let me have my way and signed off on the business license in the end just as I knew he would.

Now, Dark Soul was a thriving business that employed twenty people, including myself, and three doctors who rotated their hours so that there was always a doctor on call. We worked closely with the medical community to ensure we didn’t lead anyone down the wrong path but mostly we were an agnostic spiritual community. Sure, most of our members followed the Crow King or Frost and Juda or all the above but the business in question didn’t align itself with any founder or spiritual practice so that everyone felt welcome. There were plenty of temples in the territory for that part of life. In fact, there was a Temple of the Crow King down the block from us. A Cuddle Club franchise was housed next door and sometimes referred people to us and vice versa.

My first call should’ve been to Micah, but I was too nervous to poke him over our mating link. It was a good thing. This was a good thing but the moment I smelled nervous his wolf would be a mess. Not in a way that meant he couldn’t function as an adult but in a way that meant we’d sink back into being attached at the side until the baby came. I wasn’t dreading Micah’s undivided attention but sometimes I wondered if it was healthy for us to cocoon away from everyone so often.

“We don’t do it often. Often means almost all the time,”my wolf cut into my thoughts.“We do other things in between ‘cocooning.’ We do or we’d never help anyone or raise any pups. Sometimes we have to cocoon. Sometimes together is the only safe place in the whole crow-damned universe.”

“Silas is safe too,” I said aloud to him.

Micah had a few hours of work left. I’d tell him when he came home. Hell, maybe I’d order in something fancy and tellhim over dinner. Maybe I’d just write it on my stomach and let him find out when he undressed me tonight. The options really were limitless because when he was in private group sessions, he kept his end of our mating link closed. If there was an emergency, I could yank on him really hard and get his attention, but it had been a long time since I had to do something like that. So, instead of interrupting what might’ve been groundbreaking work with his support group I sent Silas a text.

ME:Guess what, brother!

SILAS:What?

ME:GUESS!

SILAS:WHAT?!

ME:DON’T BE THAT WAY, UNCLE!

I sent him a line of crying wolf face emojis. Silas and I didn’t text a lot unless you counted photos, memes, and information about pack gatherings. We usually used the phone or the pack link for little conversations but I didn’t want word getting out over the pack link until I had a chance to tell Micah. I didn’t want my alpha to hear it from anyone else before he heard it from me. Keeping any secret was harder than it should’ve been when your true-mate was a Grim Howler.

SILAS:REALLY?

ME:YES! FINALLY!

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