Page 35 of Use Me Up

The waiter smiles at me, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, fine,” I agree. “Coffee and a martini.” I never drink this early on a Sunday. I really don’t drink much at all.

“Coming right up,” says the waiter and disappears, still smiling.

I look at the menu.

“There’s a buffet,” says Ellis, gesturing.

I look at where he’s gesturing, and I see the long stretch of a sideboard where a buffet should be set up, but the drop-in wells are all empty and the lights are off.

“It starts at 10:00,” he says.

Great. So, sit here, drink a lot, and then we get food to soak it up later? I have a very bad feeling about all of this. But then, why am I even here? I certainly do not have a good feeling about anything to do with Ellis Cirillo.

Ellis is still looking at Callie’s back.

She throws a glance over her shoulder, locks her gaze with him, and then meets my gaze.

I don’t know what to do. I feel my whole body freeze.

She turns back to the bar.

Ellis gets up.

“Are you going over there to talk to her?” I say in a quiet voice.

He glances at me, and then back at her, and then he sits back down. “No.”

I wonder if I should try to change the subject, make small talk, get his mind off whatever the hell we’re doing here. Except I can’t think of anything, and I don’t even really know what we are doing here, I have to admit. He can’t resist her, and I’m along for the ride because I have nothing better to do with myself?

I’m pathetic and boring and this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in my entire life.

Also, he’s awful, but I feel for him. And I like him, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

“I presented as an omega when I was fifteen,” he says to me. He’s still looking at Calliope. “I don’t know if you know how that happens for male omegas?”

“Uh…” I think about it. It’s slick, right? That’s usually the first sign? So that must mean… “Oh, geez. Where were you?”

“School,” he says. “Big wet spot on the back of my jeans, just pouring out of my asshole. And she gave me her sweater to tie around my waist, and she said we’d just hide it, because on a Polloi compound, being a male omega, it’s not great.”

I guess I haven’t really thought about this. I know that the Polloi tend to have family groups that organize around female omegas, and they tend to have a lot of male alphas, but I thought that it was sort of understood that there was homosexual sex between the alphas in a pack. I want to ask questions, but I’m not sure what to say.

He just keeps talking. “You basically never get claimed. No alpha wants to bite in on a pack centered around a male omega, because there’s no chance of offspring. If you go into heat, though, and a male alpha sniffs you out, he might be tempted to do things to you. If he accidentally bites you? I mean, he might just kill you afterwards.”

I gasp. “Seriously?”

“Nothing more shameful than being bound to a man,” he says with a shrug. “It’s not great for female alphas either, but they might be able to join a pack, claim another female omega, and then, you know, two wombs, double the babies… it’s less bad, but it’s still not great either.”

“That’s awful.” I can only imagine how frightening that was for him, only fifteen. “What about a pack with a male omega and a female alpha, though?”

He shrugs. “I mean, maybe that technically works. I’ve never heard of that happening in the Polloi.”

“People leave,” I say.

“Mostly,” he says. “The Polloi is like most traditional religious groups. You do things the traditional way, or you’re ostracized.”

I let out a breath. “Well, when you presented, that must have been really scary.”