“What’s it like?” he whispered. “Being knotted.”
I hummed. “Pretty amazing, to be honest. Yeah, the first few times I had to fight instinct. We’re supposed to be the ones doing the knotting, not on the receiving end. But having another man locked inside, held together by his knot… There’s nothing quite like it.”
He made a noise, then fell silent for several more seconds.
“What about you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No… I…” he trailed off.
I took another pull of my beer while I waited for him to continue.
Crow shifted away, eyes intent on the fire. For some reason, I missed his warmth pressed against me.
“Raven and I…” he started. “We were raised in a small religious community. Not quite a cult, but about as close as you can get without crossing that line. Things were… different… there.”
“Hmm?”
He ran a hand through his black hair. “They believed, and preached, that the primary genders are what matter. All men have seed and all women can carry babies. Why would God make us that way if he didn’t intend for that to be the preferred dynamic? Alpha and omega are aberrations and shouldn’t factor into marriages…”
He snorted. “They didn’t even want to use the word ‘mate.’ They thought that it was too feral—too animalistic.”
He paused to take a sip of beer. “Courtships had to be approved by the parents in order to keep the next generation from falling prey to their baser instincts. They tried to pair alpha men with alpha women, and omega men with omega women. That way risk of male pregnancy was minimized. Alpha men with omega women weren’t preferred, just because they really wanted to prevent an alpha woman with an omega man.”
“What happened if a man did get pregnant?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t bad enough to kick a family from the church, but the few times I heard rumors, they would make excuses to avoid social outings the last few months of his pregnancy, then once the baby was born the woman was expected to act as if she’d carried it.”
I frowned. “That minimizes the papa’s role.”
He nodded. “It does. But it was that, or admit that they’d gone against the teachings of the church.”
“I see…”
He paused. “Most of us went to a public school, but our town was so small that the bus ride was close to an hour. Since our parents wanted us back at home after school for bible study, anybody from our town almost automatically became an outcast—relegated to hanging out with our own. We weren’t allowed extracurriculars or sports. Missing the bus meant a day of prayer over the weekend, asking forgiveness for wasting the time and resources of our parents and community.”
He leaned back and stared at the sky again. “That was our life, and I went along with it. I was a dumb kid who didn’t know any better. But Raven…” He shook his head. “Raven was always outgoing. She was one of the few who made friends with the normal kids, despite not being able to interact with them outside of school.
“She saw what bullshit it all was.”
He licked his lips. “She’d never been all that comfortable with the idea of carrying a baby. She’s about as stubborn a female alpha as they come, and I think she realized that she’d never be allowed to be herself at home. She only had eyes for male omegas, even as a teen. Any attempts for our parents to arrange a courtship with a male alpha usually resulted in said young man sporting a black eye for a couple of weeks, and her relegated to prayer during every spare second.”
He chuckled, then turned to the fire again. “The night we turned eighteen, she came into my room and told me to pack a bag. I asked her why, and she said that she was leaving and that if I ever wanted to see her again, I would leave too.”
I choked on a sip of beer.
“I knew she’d been unhappy, but I had no idea how much she’d planned ahead. She was probably worried I’d tell our parents. Everything was ready, and I had minutes to decide.”
He looked down. “I figured that I’d always know where my parents were. There’s no way they’d leave the church. But she’s my twin sister. We’d been together since before we were born, and my heart ached at the thought of never seeing her again.”
I reached over and squeezed his knee.
He gave me a weak smile. “Less than an hour later, in the small hours of the morning, we stood at an intersection near our childhood home, taking only what we could carry with us. One of her friends and the friend’s parents arrived in a car, and took us away from there.”
“So you disappeared?”
“Yes… and no. We still had a couple months of high school left, and Raven absolutely had to graduate.”
“Why?”
