Page 50 of The Beta: Part Three
“He,” Talia quietly corrects.
Alpha Colton smiles. “Whatever you have in there is going to be perfect, there's no doubt about that, honey.”
“And you really feel alright? Nothing strange?” Elizabet asks.
Worry and irritation is thick in the atmosphere, but Talia answers, “I feel fine. I'm finally able to keep food down, and I can do more than sleep and cry. Things are good.”
“And they're taking good care of you?”
“Of course we're taking care of her. We learned from our mistakes, and we're going to continue making up for them. And if you have any doubts about us, Corso, Reid, and Alex are here to keep us in check.” Kaleb is losing his patience faster than Talia and Devon, and that's saying something.
Corso unfolds from the wall he was leaning against and sits on the couch, right beside Alpha Colton. Corso, as always, exudes a level of calm that most people could never reach. “Talia's mother meant no offense, mio fratello. She's only very, very concerned. Everyone here knows that Talia would never have accepted your marks if she didn't think you would care for her.” He's so smooth that I'm not sure anyone but Talia and I realize exactly how offended Corso really is. He may have far more patience with Talia's parents than Kaleb does, but he isn't any more tolerant than Kaleb. And he is incredibly protective of both Talia and our pack.
“Back with tea!” Marcus chirps, pushing an honest to god tea cart. It's absurd. So absurd that I can't stop a snort.
“Why in the world do we have a tea tray?” I laugh.
“It came with the house,” Alex says as he pours three cups of ‘that omega stuff’ and stirs a heavy spoonful of honey into each before he distributes them to Talia, Elizabet, and me. I feel a little silly drinking tea when the other men in the room are drinking beers, but I'm a week away from my next heat and I actually need the tea.
“Now,” Talia says over her cup, “spill it. Why are you so upset that I'm having a baby with Jasper?”
Elizabet takes a steadying breath and begins. “I was only twenty-seven when I took over the institute. There was so much work that needed to be done, we had to physically gut the building. After most of the work was finished, I did a final walk through to make sure nothing was missed before the crews left out. In the basement I found a little locked door that everyone assumed was to access the pipes, or something. I didn't give it a second thought the first few times I passed it. I don't know why I felt the need to open it during that walk through, but I did. I found boxes and boxes of old files and paperwork. Lots of pictures. And an overwhelming number of charts. I was curious and started going through it. It took me three weeks of solid combing and organizing to come to understand what it was all about.”
She takes a sip of her tea and gives Talia a tight smile before she continues. “All the files belonged to a Doctor Gordon Cabbott. He was a geneticist, and an omega. I won't get into all the details of the files, it's all very tedious; but long story short, Doctor Cabbott was researching the origin of the decline of the omega population. What I read was disturbing, and somewhat disgusting. Many generations ago, the omegas were so much more plentiful than today. There were never a large number of male omegas, but there were significantly more than there are now. The packs were different, as well. They were larger. It was almost always a collection of several alphas and betas clustered around a pair or sometimes a trio of omegas. Not every pack had a male and female omega, some only had females, but it was almost always a large pack and more than one omega. There were omega-omega pairings that resulted in omega-omega offspring. With that number of reproducing omega pairs, the population of omegas was growing steadily. The reigning alphas at the time became threatened by the increasing numbers of omegas and started putting out propaganda about omega-omega children being prone to disease, that they were weak and would weaken the population as a whole. They started openly discouraging omega-omega pairings, even going so far as to forcefully separate packs.
“It became taboo to have more than one omega, and socially forbidden to have a male and female omega in the same pack. Right about that time, there was a dramatic decrease in what we call true mates. Doctor Cabbott hypothesized that there were fewer mated pairs because there were fewer omegas. He thought that the ability for us to have a true mate was essentially being bred out of us all in the name of population control. But nature will always find a way, and-”
“Stop,” Trent interrupts, “just wait a minute. That's all fine and good, but what does it have to do with now? You said yourself that was generations ago.”
“How many packs have more than one omega, Trent?” Elizabet asks. “How many people do you know who have found their true mate? Have you ever seen or heard of an omega-omega reproducing pair in your entire lifetime?”
“No.”
“Exactly. It's still taboo. And there are so few omegas that it's nearly impossible. Doctor Cabbott guessed that a perfect pack would consist of one male omega with one or two female omegas surrounded by five to seven alphas and however many betas that pack felt they could support. Not every child would be an omega because the male omega would only be able to impregnate a female during his heat.”
Talia holds up her hand and stops Elizabet's explanation. “What do you mean, not every child? Why would that even be a concern?”
Elizabet smiles at me and pats Alpha Colton's knee. “This is probably what those alphas found the most unsettling. Doctor Cabbott found that male omega sperm are thousands of times more dominant than alpha sperm. That's why male omegas are able to impregnate female alphas, why they're able to produce so many omega offspring with beta females even though the alphas in their pack are also having sex with those same beta females. Even if you all didn't have implants, a tablespoon of Jasper's swimmers would out-swim gallons of your alphas’ swimmers.”
“Darling, please. Let's not include gallons of sperm in a conversation with our daughter,” Thaddeus sighs.
Then Alex's obnoxiously loud laugh echoes off the walls. “So what you're saying,” he says, “is that Jasper is the dominant species?”
“Yes.”
Alex laughs again, like this is the best thing he’s ever heard. “Absolutely fabulous. That might explain that sound you were making, peaches.”
I drag my hand down my face. I was hoping nobody would bring that up. Talia was angry with me for days, and still gets prickly whenever someone mentions it.
“What sound?” Elizabet asks. “Can you make it again? What was happening when you made it?”
I groan and explain the whole thing. Elizabet is enthralled by the end of the summary.
“How did you feel when he was making the sound, all of you?” she asks my pack.
Reid answers for all of them. “Like we were under a spell. Warm, well, content. Quiet. Like he was big, bigger than all of us. Then we started to notice that Talia was completely lost in it and it scared us. Devon asked Jasper to pull her out of it so we could see if she was alright.”
“It’s because she’s pregnant,” Elizabet is working through the information and connecting things so fast that her eyes glaze over a little. “It was mentioned twice in Doctor Cabot’s findings. The sound, he called it reverberation, affects the entire pack, but most strongly the female. It’s something that other male mammals are able to do for their packs. He never made it before because he didn’t have a pregnant mate to care for and protect. That means…” she smiles a little, “Alex is more right than he intended to be. Maybe you are the dominant male of our species.”
