“No,” I answered honestly. And it really was a sincere answer, because my instincts told me to win the fight, but I wasn’t thinking past the moment. When wrestling her, I was experiencing each infinitely long second as it was.
Ava stared down at me for a few moments, her eyes flicking down towards my waist before she shook her head. And then it clicked.
“Wait…never mind.”
“Figured it out?” she asked skeptically, like she thought I had been playing dumb to begin with.
I had to admit, I felt stupid now that I evaluated the situation while no longer being in it. “But wait, why did that just happen?” I asked seriously. “All I was trying to do was apologize for earlier.”
Ava shook her head. “I don’t know what you did. Maybe Blair knows, but I don’t think you should talk to her anymore. Like ever.”
I scoffed, finally sitting up. “Oh please, it’s not that bad.”
“Jake, I kicked you in the side like ten times, and you just completely ignored me. You didn’t respond until I finally kicked you in the face.”
My brow furrowed again. “Seriously?”
“Yes seriously,” she scoffed. She then groaned. “This doesn’t even make sense though. The categories we use aren’t exactly scientific, but I still would have never imagined you’d have this kind of reaction to her.”
“Well, we can’t tell Robert,” Zayden chimed in. “They’ll probably kick her off the team if they find out.”
I twisted around to gawk at him. “Zayden,” I exclaimed. “You actually care about what happens to another person?”
“Don’t be a smartass,” he snapped. “She’s actually alright, and she’ll be useful on missions, so I’d rather have her around, rather than some other prick.”
I sighed. “I need to go talk to her.”
“No, you don’t!” Ava exclaimed. “Seriously Jake, what are you thinking?”
“I need to talk to her,” I repeated firmly, standing up. “You can come with me if you want, so you can kick me in the face if that happens again.”
“How about I stab you in the face next time,” she snapped.
I shrugged. “Might as well,” I agreed, prompting her eyes to widen in surprise. “If you manage to hurt me, I’ll just recover anyway.”
“Jake,” she repeated, holding out her hand to block my path. “Think of Trinity.”
I winced at that, meeting her gaze. “Look, I was just wrestling with her. I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere else…” I held up my hand when she was about to interject. “Yes, I realize now what might have been happening, but I wasn’t at that point when you kicked me. I was just…asserting my dominance, I guess. And now I really need to talk to her, because I messed up what we were doing twice, and I think it really messed with her.”
“She’ll get over it,” Ava countered.
“No, she won’t,” I retorted. However, I didn’t want to waste any more time, so instead of waiting for her to continue arguing, I finally reached out and grabbed Ava’s wrist, only to begin dragging her along behind me.
“Jake!” she exclaimed, stumbling to fall in step.
I ignored her, dragging her back into the barracks to Trinity’s old room. The door didn’t have a lock on it – Trinity certainly didn’t need one anyway to keep people out with the threat of her power – so I barged right in without knocking, only to find Blair crying on the bed.
Her gaze immediately shot in my direction, her expression pissed – not sad. Even though my bite had drawn blood, my teeth marks still visible on her neck, it appeared to have stopped bleeding already.
I froze when I saw her, before slowly reaching my hand out like I had before, palm up. She jumped out of bed and marched right towards me a second time, her fingers just barely hovering over my palm like before. She glared up at me for a solid few seconds before she finally spoke.
“Don’t start something you’re not going to finish,” she snapped.
“I won’t,” I agreed firmly. I didn’t feel like it was right to apologize for what had happened, feeling like it would be a slap in the face for her, so I didn’t.
She continued to stare at me for a few seconds longer, before taking a step back.
Ava cleared her throat behind me. “Umm, Blair, can you explain what happened exactly? I don’t think Jake meant to do whatever he did.”
“Oh, he meant it,” she retorted. “He just wimped out is all.”
I grinned at her. I couldn’t help it. Because she was doing it again – provoking me to dominate her. This wasn’t over like I thought. It was a challenge like before. A challenge to take her on and make her submit. And it wasn’t like she was an ‘easy’ girl. Certainly, she was probably always offering to every guy she met, but she wasn’t going to ‘put out’ unless someone could claim her by making her submit.
And she was so strong that she had probably never met anyone who could overpower her. I was fairly certain she was stronger than Trinity, which meant even Zane couldn’t do it by a long-shot. Not unless his predator-controlling ability had some influence over her.
The temptation to accept her challenge was almost overpowering. I had never experienced anything like it before. I wanted desperately to finish what we had started too, but Ava was right. If it was leading to us mating, then I had to put a stop here. I had to focus on Trinity’s crimson gaze and blue hair instead of the haughty mismatched gaze begging me to make her whimper again.
And that’s when it hit me.
I wasn’t even sure how, but suddenly I felt like I understood what I had done previously. I had given her a false sign of submission – my open hand – like an invitation she couldn’t resist, only to show her who was boss once I had pulled her in. Except, she had shown me who was boss initially when I turned my gaze away – the urge to dominate or be dominated being overwhelming.
While deep in thought, I must have been leaning towards her again, because suddenly Ava was standing in between us, pushing on my chest.
“Out!” she snapped.
I sighed, closing my eyes as I allowed Ava to begin pushing me back out the door.
Unexpectedly, a fist connected with my face, and I went tumbling into the hall.
“Wimp!” Blair yelled at me, slamming the door closed.
I grinned again, keeping my eyes shut in an effort to separate myself from her taunting.
“Dammit Jake,” Ava whispered quietly. “Get that smirk off your face.”
I tried to compose myself as I lay on the floor, but it was difficult. After a moment, Ava sat down next to me and placed her hand on my chest, prompting me to take a deep breath as an entirely different wave of warmth washed over me.
“Sorry,” I whispered after a moment, my excitement finally dying down.
“You need to stay away from her,” Ava repeated quietly. “They can’t know you’re having this reaction to her. They’ll definitely kick her off the team if they do.”
“And why is that?” I asked seriously.
“Because…for someone like her and Zane, excitement on the field can easily turn into something else. And they can’t have teammates sabotaging the mission by taking time to…” Her voice trailed off. “Not to mention,” she continued. “It’s super distracting. I freaking kicked you, and you completely ignored me!”
I sighed heavily. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. My brow furrowed then. Because I wasn’t like Zane or Blair as far as I could tell, just like Ava had mentioned previously. Sure, I had some pretty strong instincts, but did I really share enough characteristics with them? It didn’t make any sense in my opinion. I couldn’t be a blood-drinker, a psychic, and a beast.
My eyes popped open as I decided to comment about it. “But I’m not–“
Unexpectedly, Ava’s eyes widened in terror, and she leapt away from me, shifting partially into a shadow at the same time.
“Shit!” she exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?!” I asked urgently, sitting upright as I reached out with m
y sixth sense, wondering if I had missed a threat.
“J-Jake!” she continued, her body slowly shifting back to normal as she backed away. “Y-Your eye!”
I reached up automatically to feel my eyes, but didn’t sense anything abnormal, other than one feeling a little warm.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?” I asked seriously.
“Not your eyes!” she elaborated. “Your eye! Your left pupil is a slit like…like Blair’s…”
The office door suddenly opened at the mention of her name – Blair’s eyes widening in shock when she saw me. She then took a step closer, followed by another.
I leaned my back against the wall as she straddled my legs and plopped down in my lap. My fingers ran through the short blonde fur on her thighs automatically as she grabbed my face in her hands, staring at my left eye intently. I couldn’t help but focus on her slitted eye, bright red against her black sclera.
“How is this possible?” she finally asked, turning her head to look up at Ava.
Surprisingly, Ava didn’t respond right away, her expression shocked as she stared into space.
“How is this possible?” Blair repeated, sounding a little annoyed now.
“I-I don’t know,” Ava finally conceded. “Unless…unless…” She paused, her gaze finally focusing on mine. “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
“What?” we said in sync.
Zayden burst back into the hallway then. “WHAT IN THE HELL is…” His voice trailed off. “Dammit, you two!” He yelled, visible waves of heat coming off his body.
“Zayden!” Ava snapped. “Look at his eye!”
His brow furrowed, before he stormed towards us, only to jump back half a foot when he finally saw it. “That shit’s messed up!” he snapped.
“Ava,” I urged. “What does this mean?”
“Did you drink her blood?” Ava demanded.
I gawked at her. “I mean, a little I guess, but not like I was feeding.”
“Shit,” Ava exclaimed, taking a step back to lean against the wall. “Jake, remember when Trinity gave you a blood bag a week ago? The military’s blood bank didn’t have time to ship out blood on such short notice, so Zane donated some of his. We didn’t want to tell you because we were concerned you wouldn’t want to absorb it if you knew where it came from.” She groaned. “Dammit, when Trinity mentioned the metahuman who had kidnapped her, we should have considered this as an option.”
Suddenly, everything began to click, because I recalled what Trinity had said about her captor. He had been a blood-drinker like me, but most importantly, he had been looking for someone with the power to heal…so that he could steal that power for himself temporarily.
“Shit!” I exclaimed. “You think I’m absorbing people’s powers too?” I asked in disbelief.
She shook her head. “No, not absorbing. You must be mimicking them, or parts of them, integrating them into your own power.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Zayden hissed. “I bet that’s why he suddenly became so durable,” he added.
I gawked at him. “But the only person whose blood I had absorbed at that point was Weaver’s.”
“Did you absorb some of Liz’s?” Ava asked seriously.
I thought about that.
Had I? I knew I had avoided killing her, but in the moment of my attack, when I was absorbing Weaver’s blood, I had sort of lost it. I recalled thinking only after-the-fact that I must have still had a heart, since I spared Liz. Had I accidentally stolen some of her blood too? Would she have told us if she was hurt? Then again, what if it had been a pinprick like I’d done before? Would Liz have even noticed such a small wound?
Now that I thought about the fight with Zayden…
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I remember when Zayden exploded in our fight, that it felt like there was a razor thin barrier between my body and his heat.”
Ava sighed heavily, covering her eyes with her hand. “That must be it then. You did absorb some of Liz’s blood, and you mimicked her power slightly. You aren’t generating a massive force field like her, but you are probably generating a really small one – just enough to protect your own body. And it must just be your physical body,” she continued. “Otherwise the radiation wouldn’t have made you sick. Shit, for all we know, mimicking powers might be your only inherent ability, with everything else being something you’ve gotten from others.”
I nodded slowly in agreement.
Blair chimed in again, grabbing my face to stare at my eye again. “Radiation?” she wondered.
I cleared my throat, my fingers twitching in the fur on her thighs, feeling the weight of her straddling my lap. “Yeah, we sort of got hit with one of the nuclear bombs,” I replied carefully. “The three of us survived, but I was really sick afterwards for a while.”
Blair nodded slowly, seeming to accept that explanation while she continued to hold my gaze intently.
“Blair,” Ava finally said in a firm tone. “You can get off him now.”
“Shh,” she hissed. “I’m watching it change.”
That got her attention. Suddenly Ava walked over and sat down on my left side to stare at my eye too. Zayden scoffed and walked into the bay room.
“Umm, guys…” I began hesitantly.
“Shh,” Blair repeated.
“Whoa,” Ava exclaimed after a moment. “The white of your eye just turned black. That’s kind of cool actually.”
“I know, right?” Blair agreed.
“It’s not cool,” I retorted. “If I end up with mismatched eyes, then they’ll know something is going on. Will they really be okay with me being able to do something like this?”
Ava’s brow furrowed. “You’re right. But maybe you can try making it go back to normal,” she considered. “If you gained some of Zane’s abilities, then maybe returning to a normal form is something you picked up as well.”
“Do you think I can transform like him?” I wondered.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Have you tried?”
“Well of course not,” I retorted, trying to move my head towards her. I couldn’t though, with Blair firmly holding my face in place. Damn she was strong. At least with Trinity I could struggle a little.
“Try now then,” Ava replied. “I think it’s done changing.”
I closed my eyes to focus. It was difficult concentrating though, because the two women sitting so close were generating too much warmth between the two of them, not to mention that having Blair straddling my lap was awkward, especially since her pink booty shorts didn’t cover much more than underwear would. And the material was almost just as thin.
I had no idea how I was supposed to try to use any of the other abilities I might have mimicked though. I had no idea how Zane transformed, if he had to think of something in particular or if it just happened naturally, like breathing. I tried a few different things, but nothing seemed to work. Then after a few moments, I wondered if his other form was just like a different state of mind that manifested itself physically, much like my blood acted of its own volition when my state of mind changed.
But what state would that be? A confident one? An arrogant one? A sense of superiority? He was called Alpha after all, because he exerted himself as the alpha over other predators, making them obey him. Could I be like that? Could I perceive myself as being an alpha?
“I don’t think it’s working,” Ava sighed after a moment.
My eyes popped open, focusing intently on Blair’s mismatched gaze. I vaguely saw Ava gawk at me from the corner of my vision as Blair’s intense expression shifted to vulnerability again. Her bottom lip began trembling, and it felt like her weight increased in my lap as she clasped her hands tightly together like she was suddenly praying.
Zayden stormed down the hall then, appearing to head to the restrooms, jerking us out of the moment. “Are you three just going to sit there all day?” he snapped as he passed us. “We still need to run before dinner,” he added as he continued down
the hall, ignoring me entirely.
Blair had dropped her clasped hands, pressing her knuckles against my hard stomach like she was trying to support herself, her legs limp.
I focused on Ava again.
“Well?” I wondered.
She cleared her throat. “Your right eye is gold like Zane’s, and your left slitted eye is icy blue now…and black too, instead of white.” She paused, staring at my left eye with her lips slightly parted. After a moment, she shifted her gaze to my right. “Umm, try to see if you can reverse it now.”
I nodded, but instead of trying to feel the opposite, I just let the sensation of feeling like I was an apex predator slip away.
“How about now?” I wondered.
Ava nodded slowly, trying to speak, before clearing her throat again. “Yes,” she managed. “Both your eyes look normal again.”
I sighed in relief. “Well, that’s good. I’ll need to be careful from now on though. Because I’m sure there are abilities I don’t want to mimic.” In particular, I had in mind a metahuman who had attacked Trinity by vomiting acid on her – definitely something I didn’t want to be able to do. Although, I wasn’t exactly copying abilities entirely. Instead, it was like I was replicating some of their traits, which meant that instead of vomiting acid, my blood or saliva might just become acidic – again, neither of which I wanted.
Unexpectedly Zayden called down the hall. “Damn right!” he snapped in annoyance. “Don’t even think about touching my blood! You don’t want my problems,” he scoffed.
Ava and I exchanged a glance.
She cleared her throat, calling down the hall to him. “What are you talking about?” she wondered cautiously.
He was silent for a moment. At first, we weren’t sure if he was going to answer, but then he did. “I can’t control my flames in certain situations,” he finally admitted. He said it so quietly that, if the doorless bathroom and hall hadn’t carried the sound, then we might have missed his answer.
We both exchanged a glance again, Ava looking especially concerned by that response. I didn’t know what Zayden meant by that, but suddenly I felt acutely aware of how warm I was feeling with Blair sitting on my lap.
Omega Zero Page 18
