Page 32 of Feral Creed

“This one of the secular alphas?” says one of them.

“Yeah, the ones Penelope let in,” says Theodorus. “Go on, show her,” he says to me.

I lost my expanded teeth during the walk over, and I have to think about biting to get them back. I remember how it felt to sink them into Arrow, the way it lit up this bright line of connection between us, and it makes me react. I open my mouth.

“Well!” The woman, who I think must be Kyvelki, gets up from the table and comes over to me. Her hair is long and gray, and I think about how often I’ve seen women who don’t color or style their gray hair, but she doesn’t really look old, or… there’s something about the way she carries herself, maybe, something that’s different from the way old women carry themselves. This womanknowsshe’s important. She expects everyone to defer to her.

I realize that old women usually aren’t that way.

Huh.

Anyway, she’s got her fingers in my mouth now, touching my teeth, making little exclamatory noises. “This is like the stories.”

“Exactly, folklore, about the first alphas,” says Theodorus.

“Yes, but that’s foolish,” she says. “Or I always thought…” She nods for me to sit down at the kitchen table.

I do that. I want to say something, to ask her questions, but I remember how Calix was about this place, and I decide that being quiet until spoken to might be the best way to navigate things.

“You two, back to washing,” says Kyvelki to the men, who are probably her mates? And she’s telling them what to do?

They go back to the sink, silent and obedient. I feel that in two ways. One, I don’t like it because I don’t like anyone telling me what to do, and I’m personally affronted by any attempt to control me. Two, I think of being made to be subservient because all men or all alphas or all… anything are supposed to be subservient, and I don’t like it.

The urge to say something, to rebel, grows stronger.

And I feel Arrow suddenly. He’s not telling me what to do. Arrow senses, somehow, that would make me react in the opposite way. Instead, he’s just there, strong and quiet, and inhabiting me, and somehow, his presence makes it easier to choose my pack over my independence. I want to protectthem more than I want anything else, after all. We need this information. I will get it. Even if it means being demeaned and watching demeaning things happening.

Arrow himself has described my masculinity as toxic, but…

It’s not like I think that the natural way of things is for men to rule over women or something, so I’m horrified by this inversion here for that reason.

I mean… I don’tthinkthat’s why.

I think I’d be horrified the other way, too. I’m pretty sure I would.

This place… whatever it is about this place… I don’t know if it’s a good place.

Kyvelki eyes me. “You wouldn’t know the stories about the origins of alphas and omegas would you?”

“Uh…” I furrow my brow, because it’s not as if the Polloi folklore is entirely unknown by us. “Something about wolves, right? Like, weren’t we raised by wolves?”

“‘We,’” she echoes.

“I mean, not us, but don’t you believe that’s where the alphas came from?” I say, cringing, thinking about being stoned to death. How much literal stoning to death do the Polloi do these days, anyway? I seem to remember some civil liberties case where they said that the Polloi were not allowed to do their ritual stoning-to-death thing when an alpha decided he didn’t want to die with his omega. However, I understand it’s pretty common for alphas in an omega’s pack to shoot themselves right after she dies. They just do it.

It’s not like they can stay, anyway.

Supposedly, it’s illegal for them to be forced to commit suicide, but the Polloi basically say, ‘Kill yourself or get out.’ And most of these guys are in their eighties by this time. Where are they going to go?

Kyvelki is talking. “Yes, there’s a component of wolves in the story. What happens is that a king… he has different names in different stories, but he marries a young and beautiful woman who already has twin boys, brothers, who also have various names in various versions of the tale. The king does not wish his new wife to have children except his own, so he contrives to take the children away from her. He intends to kill them, but at the last moment, he can’t do this unspeakable act, so he simply leaves them in the wilderness to die. But the Goddess sees, and she takes pity on the boys, and she causes a she-wolf to come and to allow the boys to nurse along with her litter of pups. When the boys grow up, she gives them teeth, teeth by which they can claim. And the boys come back to the kingdom, where the king had cast them out, and the king has new wives in addition to their mother. The twin boys use their teeth to bite the king’s other wives and they become the first omegas, transformed by the bites. Is that the story you heard?”

“Something like that,” I say. “But I also thought that the first omega was like… Snow White or something? Like she gets thrown out of her kingdom by a wicked stepmother—”

“Step-parents tend to be evil in these tales,” says Kyvelki. “It’s odd, really, I’ve always thought, especially since in our culture, there is often no real clear way to know paternity of children. It’s like a relic of some older culture that has seeped into our folklore, these stories about step-parents.” She laughs. “Of course, not all of our stories are that way, but the origin stories, they seem to build on the culture outside of alpha and omega interaction.”

I just nod. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

She looks me over. “You scent as if you’re afraid of me.”

---