13. Strange Juices

13

STRANGE JUICES

Telos woke up surrounded by warmth. It was exceedingly strange.

Most nights, he kicked off his covers because he ran hot. The unusual warmth wasn’t budging, though. Instead, it was wrapped around his chest and plastered against his back, all the way to his heels.

The hell? Did I bring someone home last night?

He opened his eyes and realized it was a muscular arm wrapped around his chest. Not an omega.

An alpha.

He jerked wide awake, looking over his shoulder.

Mav was sleeping behind him, shirtless. When Telos wriggled his hips, he realized they were both naked.

“What the hell?” he squawked.

How had he ended up in bed with Mav? Of all people? This was the best and worst thing ever. Then he moved a bit more, and realized he ached a little. Between his legs.

The memories from yesterday slammed into his brain.

Oh.

They’d fucked. Not just once, but twice.

It had been the best sex of Telos’ life.

He watched apprehensively over his shoulder as Mav stirred. Mav tightened his arm around Telos, pressing his face to Telos’ nape. He nuzzled Telos. Then he froze for a long moment, before pulling away.

Their eyes met over Telos’ shoulder.

Mav blinked several times. Then he unwrapped his arm from Telos’ chest, and rubbed his face. “Oh.”

“How did we get in bed? Together?” Telos gestured vaguely between them, careful not to point out that they were both bare-assed naked.

Mav glanced at the other bed—the one he’d claimed as his own. “It’s a soggy mess in the middle of that bed,” he said, his voice sleep-rough. “I’m not sleeping in it. Actually, this bed was soaked, too, but I put down some towels.”

They were soaked because Telos had come a lot onto both beds. While impaled on Mav’s cock.

He tried not to think about it. But the memory scorched and made his toes curl.

Mav raised an eyebrow. “Again?”

Telos ignored the question. “How did I get from there to here?”

“You slithered like a slug.” Mav rolled his eyes. “I carried you.”

“Aww, how gallant.”

Mav shrugged. “It’s better than listening to you bitch when you wake up sticky in the morning.”

Telos stopped breathing. Mav took one look at him and frowned.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” Mav said quietly. “You know what you’re like.”

Well, Telos did. He’d said a lot of scathing things to keep Mav away and protect his own heart. And he would’ve gone back to that, if Mav had scoffed at him for bottoming.

When he looked down, he realized that he wasn’t covered in dried cum like he should’ve been. “Did you... clean me up?”

Mav was looking at everything but him. “Least I could do.”

Telos blinked rapidly. “Here I thought you hated me.”

“I...” Mav wet his lips. “I don’t hate you. You just get under my skin. A lot. It’s easier to be mad at you.”

Telos wasn’t sure what to feel about that. He leaned over the edge of the bed and grabbed the discarded covers, pulling them over himself.

Mav grabbed the other side of the covers and tugged them over his own shoulders. He took more than half, actually.

“Hey!” Telos pulled the covers back, more than he needed.

Mav gave him a stink eye and muscled the covers over to his side of the bed. More than half.

“You seem to have trouble with dimensions,” Telos sniped. “Can’t tell where the middle is?”

“You can’t, either.” Mav kept tugging on the covers until he had most of it. “It’s like you don’t know how to share. ”

“I’ll show you ‘sharing’.” Telos lifted the covers, shoved Mav onto his back, and lay on top of him, facing the ceiling. “Now it’s all mine.”

Mav snorted. “Are you sharing your ass, too? It’s right on top of me.”

Telos had been hoping Mav would miss that. He wasn’t about to swallow his pride and ask for Mav’s cock again, but...

Before he could come up with a reply, a tiny voice babbled across the room.

“Estie!” Telos leaped out of bed, accidentally elbowing Mav in the stomach. Mav grunted. “Crap. I can’t believe I forgot about you. Have you been awake this whole time?”

“She woke up in the middle of the night,” Mav said.

Telos glanced at him, horrified.

Mav shrugged. “You were sleeping deeply. I had Hilly-Billy come in to give her a diaper change and formula.”

“He stuck around and hovered until we were done,” Hilly-Billy said smugly from elsewhere in the suite.

Telos wanted to be mad because Mav had made him miss his first time waking up to care for his daughter.

“We have a mission to complete today,” Mav said simply. “You need to be well-rested for it.”

Telos scowled anyway, scooping Estie out of her crib and giving her several morning kisses. But Hilly-Billy’s words lingered in his mind. He turned to Mav and said, “You want a baby.”

Mav shrugged, looking away.

“Why don’t you have a baby yet?”

For a long moment, Mav just scowled. Then he finally said, “No one feels right. To have a baby with.”

“You could just be a single dad.”

Mav was still not looking at Telos.

“Oh,” Telos said with sudden clarity. “You’re also a hopeless romantic, and you want your genes to mix with your One True Love’s so you can have the greatest love child of all time.”

Mav shrugged again, but he glanced at Estie wriggling in Telos’ arms.

“Hey,” Telos said, straightening his shoulders. “She might not have come from my One True Love, but she’s still my daughter.”

“Who’s your—” Mav cut himself off. “Never mind.”

Telos raised his eyebrow. If that question had anything to do with his One True Love, he wasn’t answering it. “Anyway, she needs to be fed again.”

He let her have his nipple in the meantime.

To Telos’ surprise, there was a small, rushing sensation in his chest. Then clear fluid leaked out of both his nipples, and he almost dropped Estie. “What the fuck?”

Estie suckled happily from him. Telos hurriedly pulled her off and stared at his wet nipples, horrified.

Mav sat upright, his eyes sharpening.

No, Telos’ nipples had not stopped dripping at all. Anxiety bunched in his stomach.

“This is what the internet warns you about all the time. I think I might have fallen gravely ill. I need to see a doctor.” Telos swayed on his feet, his ears ringing. He’d only just found Estie. He couldn’t fall sick and leave her all alone in this world.

Not that she would be alone because she’d still have all of Telos’ butler brothers, but... He wanted to be her dad for a long time, damn it! Why was life so unfair?

“Hey.” Mav was suddenly in front of him. He gripped Telos’ shoulders. “Telos. Hey.”

Telos looked blearily at him.

“Don’t panic yet.” Mav lifted a finger and touched it to Telos’ nipple, before putting it in his mouth.

Telos gaped. “Y-you just sucked off my sick juices.”

Mav made a face. “Don’t call it that. It tastes like colostrum.”

“Colostrum? The thing omegas make before breast milk?”

“Yes.”

“How do you even know what that tastes like?!”

Mav gave him a flat look. “We’re both over three hundred years old. How do you not know what it tastes like?”

“I don’t just go walking up to every omega asking to taste their milk!”

Mav shrugged. “I was curious enough to ask a few. For actual research.”

Telos stared at his own nipples for a long time. Then he looked back up at Mav. “I’m really not sick?”

“Doesn’t seem like it.” Mav’s gaze intensified. “Here, taste it for yourself.”

He brushed that same finger over Telos’ wet nipple, and pushed it between Telos’ lips.

Telos stared in shock. Mav’s finger was in his mouth. Mav’s finger, with Mav’s saliva, was on his tongue. And Mav was watching him, not looking away. “This is fucking strange.”

“Do you taste it?” Mav asked, patiently.

Telos slowly slid his tongue around Mav’s calloused fingertip. It tasted like... nothing. Like a bit of salt, maybe. And it kind of smelled like buttermilk.

“That’s what colostrum tastes like.” Mav pulled his finger out of Telos’ mouth, gathered more fluid off his chest, and pushed it back between Telos’ lips.

It was too intimate for Telos to examine closely right now.

He thought about his leaking chest instead, the cogs of his mind turning slowly. “If I’m not sick, then... Then why the hell am I leaking... that?”

Mav didn’t answer immediately. He cupped the back of Estie’s head and nudged her toward Telos’ chest, so she latched onto him again. “We’ve talked about this. When om—When people produce milk.”

“They do that when they’re preg—” Telos looked at his abdomen. He remembered Mav holding him down, filling him up with cum. Mav had stayed inside him, hoping for it to take. “But that was just hours ago. It hasn’t even been a full day. And I’m an alpha.”

But he also remembered trying to turn his chest into an omega’s. Back in the car, when they’d been leaving the kidnappers’ hideout. He’d been trying to feed Estie then.

Was that what made him produce slick? Hell, Mav had said he was drenched.

“I can’t have turned into an...” Telos looked down at himself.

His body was still large, his chest broad, his biceps thick. His cock was the same size, his balls still big. He didn’t feel any different. He still felt like an alpha.

“You might’ve given yourself omega parts,” Mav said quietly.

“I can’t be—The changes can’t happen in a day. ”

“It’s too much of a coincidence that your nipples are leaking the day after you tried to change your body.” Mav shrugged with one shoulder. “Unless you’d rather consider this a symptom of an illness.”

If Telos were to consider the biggest possibility... It would mean that Mav had knocked him up.

Mav. His child in Telos’ belly.

Maybe when Telos finally had a moment to himself, he would be happy about this. Right now, he just felt unnerved. Shaken. Like everything was going wrong, and he didn’t know what to do.

“Hey.” Mav grasped his arms, looking into his eyes. “Breathe.”

“I’m breathing,” Telos hissed.

“Deeper breaths. Don’t puff it right out. Hold it in.”

“Like you’re such a professional at holding things inside.”

Mav narrowed his eyes. “Don’t make me force you to hold your breath.”

“Yeah? How would you do that? Are you seriously going to fart in my face—”

Mav sighed and stepped close. He slid his fingers into Telos’ hair. Then he clamped his other hand over Telos’ nose and mouth, his lips against Telos’ ear. “I’m going to hold your breath for three seconds.”

Telos panicked a little. But he still had an arm free, to defend himself if necessary.

“One,” Mav murmured. “Two. Three. Breathe out.”

He pulled his hand off Telos’ mouth, giving him access to oxygen.

“I could’ve killed you for that,” Telos growled. But he breathed out, and sucked air back into his lungs.

Mav raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to hold it in yourself, or do you need my help again?”

“I don’t need your help,” Telos said mulishly.

He couldn’t help noticing how close Mav was. How his hand was still in Telos’ hair. Mav had never held him this gently, and Telos ached.

Now that he knew how tender Mav could be, it would hurt even worse when Mav inevitably left him.

“What’s wrong?” Mav asked.

“Nothing.”

“Try again. I can feel your misery.”

Telos scowled. “Stop spying on me.”

“I can’t stop. Your emotions feed straight into my brain.” Mav began moving his fingers through Telos’ hair, slow strokes like a light massage.

It felt good.

Telos couldn’t help but sag against the other alpha. Mav gave a small rumble, increasing the length of his strokes until all of Telos’ scalp tingled from his touch. “Fuck.”

“Feels good?” Mav watched him. “You’re not pulling away.”

Telos glared at the floor. Quietly, he said, “No one’s done that for me in a really long time.”

Mav kept on massaging him. “How long?”

“Since...” Telos sighed. “Since I was still living with my parents. That’s well over two hundred years.”

Mav sucked in a slow breath. Then he pulled Telos closer, and brushed his fingers through Telos’ hair.

Telos’ throat tightened. “Why’re you doing this?”

Mav wet his lips. “Thought I should... make things good for you.”

“Because of this?” Telos gestured at his belly.

“Partly. And also partly because I haven’t been the best to you.” Did Mav look... regretful?

Telos squinted. “You’re being weird.”

“If I put a baby in you, I’m allowed to be.”

That was still kind of hard to swallow.

“What’s this about a baby?” came Duke’s voice from just outside their door. Both of them jumped. “Did we hear right? Is Telos pregnant? ”

Telos flushed hot and cold. How much had their team heard? Gods, why hadn’t he thought about who was listening? He rolled his head back and closed his eyes, trying not to feel ashamed. “Possibly.”

“Get out here. We’re going to have an emergency meeting,” Duke said.

“Crap.”

Mav gave Telos’ hair a final brush, then pulled away to grab some folded clothes off the dresser. He tossed a pair of pants at Telos and stepped into one himself.

Telos had to disconnect Estie from his chest. She whimpered unhappily, kicking and reaching for him. “Soon, sweetheart. I’ll have Hilly-Billy make you some formula, and you won’t be hungry anymore.”

It rubbed him the wrong way, having to rely on Hilly-Billy this much to keep Estie fed. But he was also on a mission, and that took priority right now. “This is the worst time to be a new dad.”

“No kidding,” Mav muttered, opening the door.

In the suite’s living room, the others were gathered and waiting. Duke looked unimpressed; Crush was sniffing discreetly, his eyebrows rising to his hairline. Ace and Raptor grinned at each other, tucking away their phones.

Telos sighed. “Tell me how much you overheard, so I don’t have to rehash the embarrassing parts.”

Duke glanced between him and Mav. “You’re pregnant?”

Telos’ face burned. “It’s a theory. We don’t know.”

“Who’s the other dad?” Ace asked.

Raptor smacked the back of his head, but everyone’s eyes went to Mav.

Gods, had they heard Mav talk about breeding him? Telos straightened his shoulders and tried not to look embarrassed, but his burning face betrayed him anyway. No matter how good it had felt in bed, it still wasn’t dignified, admitting that you were less of an alpha than everyone else.

“The pregnancy is just a theory,” Telos said, changing the subject. “It’s only because my nipples are leaking, that we arrived at that possibility.”

“You should do a pregnancy test,” Crush said.

“ I shouldn’t have symptoms this soon, ” Telos hissed. “That’s abnormal all by itself.”

“How many days has it been since your... possible conception?” Raptor asked, purposefully obtuse.

“None of your business,” Telos growled. “You’re not my doctor.”

Duke nodded. “The only thing that matters right now is whether you’re pregnant, because of the possible risks you’ll have to take during the rescue.”

“I’ll get test kits!” Hadley flailed and rushed out of the suite excitedly. “Oh boy, these test kits need to be really special. I think I know what to do.”

“Don’t tamper with them,” Telos yelled after him.

In the kitchen area, Hilly-Billy snickered. “He won’t tamper with the part you pee on. But I think I know what he’s going to do.”

Dread crept up Telos’ spine. His brothers loved playing pranks; Hadley hadn’t had a chance to pull one since he’d shown up. “I don’t want to know, do I?”

Hilly-Billy waggled his eyebrows, handing him a bottle of formula. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Telos sighed. “Is everyone going to stick their noses in my business?”

“Yes,” they all chorused.

He couldn’t even bury his face in his hands, because he was holding the bottle for Estie. “Why is this happening to me?”

Hilly-Billy glanced pointedly between Telos and Mav. “You know why.”

Mav turned to Telos with a raised eyebrow; not that Telos had an answer to give him.

He sat down on one of the plush couches to continue nursing Estie. Mav and Crush went to the kitchen, where someone had brought in several bags of takeout for breakfast.

Telos focused on Estie—this was the first time he’d gotten to do something for her, without anyone interrupting him. She grasped the bottle with her little hands, suckling eagerly, and his heart swelled. He was doing something right.

After a while, Mav wandered over, setting a paper box and a drink on the side table next to Telos. “Food.”

Telos frowned. “What sort of food?”

“Scrambled eggs, bacon, fried mushrooms, hash browns, fried chicken, toasted English muffins.”

Telos’ eyebrows went up. Those were all things he enjoyed.

When Mav sat down next to him and opened his own box, Telos realized that his breakfast was completely different—French toast, breakfast sausages, yogurt, fruit, and a fried stack of canned meat.

Telos gagged. “You’re eating that crap meat again. And yogurt.”

Mav shrugged. “I like it.”

“You didn’t try to shove it into my box. Why?”

Mav watched him from the corner of his eye. “Contrary to popular opinion, I actually know the food you hate.”

“ You do? ” Telos couldn’t disguise his shock.

The other alpha rolled his eyes. “We’ve been to countless breakfasts with our mutual friends. You complain very loudly whenever a cook puts the wrong sort of meat on your plate.”

Telos opened and closed his mouth, scrambling for words. Mav was right. But he’d said it without any judgment, and... maybe things could work out between them. “Not that I know what food you like.”

Mav leaned in until their shoulders bumped. “That was a lie. I’m starting to be able to tell.” His mouth quirked. “You’ve been watching me at mealtimes.”

“I have not. ” Telos flushed. He waited until Estie had finished her bottle. Then he brought her to their bedroom to change her diapers—with some help from the internet. By the time he’d given her a fluffy pink rabbit to hold, he was starving.

Telos had just sat down and cracked open his box of delicious-smelling breakfast, when the suite door burst open.

Hadley stepped in with a huge bag. “I have acquired the pregnancy tests.”