by Noah Harris
I don’t mind so much, except it means I’m the weak link. I’m the one that needs that brilliant, reassuring grin. When I look at him again, the second the jets lose their thrust and we begin floating in our straps, he’s looking right back at me.
But he’s not smiling anymore. It’s a look of wonder. We did it. The light catches him for a moment, reflecting off some metal piece of the ship behind me, and he’s so beautiful I get a lump in my throat. We did it.
It feels like a summer shower, like warm laundry held against your face. We did it.
For a moment, and against my general inclination, it takes me back to Roseland. I don’t think about Texas, about the pack, more than I absolutely have to. Which is not that often. But sometimes it catches me in the strangest way.
Right now, I’m blissfully happy, in a moment that seems to stretch into forever, with those blue-jean eyes on mine. What it reminds me of, more than anything, is how I felt the afternoon of my first full moon run. I wasn’t a confirmed omega yet, just a runt with an alpha’s loud mouth. My greatest hope was that the full moon would reveal I was an alpha after all, and I’d be the savior of the family. I didn’t even know enough to worry.
A boy a lot like Darius, mysterious and beautiful, was visiting from a nearby pack, thinking about fostering with us. I was excited by the idea of switching places with him, I remember that. Not because I was miserable but because it was something new.
I don’t even remember his name. We barely spoke to each other. But I felt a heat in my chest that day, for the first time, and the wolf within me took notice immediately. If he was an alpha, I remember thinking, being an omega wouldn’t be so bad. But I shook off that strange thought and pretended not to notice him. I think he did the same.
The sun was just going down, and the men were lighting bonfires for our long wait until moonrise. I was starting to feel an edge of fear on top of the thrill, the strength I felt building in my muscles. Blood singing in my head and everywhere else. They can’t tell you what it’s going to be like, just that it’s like burning up in the sun, but absolute ecstasy at the same time.
An electric jolt rushed up my arm when someone sat next to me on my log just a little bit away from the fire. Young as I was, I was already a loner, and the pack generally left me to my own devices. It was the visiting boy, and the look in his eyes wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. At least, not directed at me.
I was instantly hard, but it was frightening, too. He wanted to possess me and just for a moment I thought it seemed sick. That’s how twisted things are back home. I thought he was some kind of sicko, looking at another shifter like that. That’s what omegas are for.
But if that were true, why did I suddenly want it so much, too? All I wanted was this strange, hungry boy inside me. I wanted it to be special, and sweet, but I also wanted it to happen as soon as possible.
The men started gathering around the fire, eyes full of flame and shining, like spirits in the dark. Just a couple at first, but then as the scent of me spread, a river of men flooded towards me. Making their way around the fire like a pack of ravenous beasts.
I’m a runt, I wanted to scream. I can’t fight! I need your help! But help wasn’t what any of them wanted to give me.
The visiting boy had his hands down the back of my shorts by then and was pulling my mouth to his. But when he felt the shiver of fear cascade down my back, he stopped. Let out an alpha growl that belied his slender, muscled form, and held up a hand against the advancing tide of men.
“Omega,” he hissed, through teeth gone razor sharp. “Omega at the run. Back off.”
The others shook themselves awake, peering at us through the swiftly falling night, their shapes backlit and gigantic against the bonfires. I could see in their body language that some of them were horrified, but more of them than I wanted to admit seemed to be more turned on than ever. Men who’d helped raise me, second cousins and great-uncles, all of them on the razor’s edge between animal and man, with the moon just rising higher and fatter all the time, lighting us up.
“Get out of here,” the boy whispered, barely able to keep his breath even as he choked out the words. His hand left bruises on my leg, where he held on for control with superhuman strength. I scrambled to my feet, holding myself in my own arms, suddenly freezing. I opened my mouth to thank him, or ask for help, or maybe just scream, and he cut me off with a roar.
“I want to...Tear. You. Apart. Leave, Roseland. Get out of here. Now.”
So, I did. The next twenty-four hours of my life turned out to be the last twenty-four hours of my life, as far as my pack was concerned.
But that moment, with the sun setting and the strange boy’s hazel eyes on fire, feeling like I was the most beautiful creature, that was real, too. Before it all went to hell, I knew what it looked like when a boy falls in love. And I’ve held onto that memory ever since, trying as hard as I can to pick away the ugliness and fear that it comes with. Just to stay in that moment of joy.
That’s how I feel now. Like a boy falling in love, forever, as the world streams away from us. Trying desperately to forget everything else, and just hold onto that feeling.
After the banquet was officially over there were a million and one interviews. Microphones, cameras and cellphones constantly in our faces, until we could finally get away. The media came to us for the next two weeks, so we could keep training, but that didn’t make it any less intrusive.
All around us, students were going home for the summer or post-graduation, leaving the campus desolate and echoing. Around every corner, another blinding camera was setup, some new reporter asking the same questions over and over.
The best were the young ones, the high school student-reporters who actually cared about all of this for what it was, rather than just being some big newsworthy event. With them, you could watch their eyes light up as you talked about space, weightlessness, history, even just the gravity on the moon. Underneath it all, they knew what we meant.
It was real for them in a way most of the grownups didn’t seem to understand. Maybe because if they did, they’d be here, and not doing whatever they’d chosen to do instead.
A few times I scented a shifter, and immediately went into covert mode, slipping out through the crowd, stealthily. I’ve learned to be suspicious around shifters, even after I forgave my pack for scaring me so badly that night. Some shifters out here in the world are okay. Nearly all of them are as terrified as I am. But a lot of them have learned to survive in ways that can be confusing. And sometimes, scary.
Human appetites can get quite fierce. I’d spent Flight School in the constant, intimate company of adolescents, so I knew all about that. But the way shifters deal with them seems really sketchy to me. There’s a predatory look you don’t see in alphas who’ve mated properly, who find an omega and settle down at the right age.
Out here, the survivors use people up most of the time, moving on to the next one. Trying to fill a need they can’t name or can’t talk about or explain. Hiding on the full moon, disappearing on their lovers just in case they might hurt them during their wild times.
Of course, there have been those who don’t even bother doing that. The boogeymen that kept the rest of us shifters in the shadows. They may be the minority, prowling along the edges of humanity, taking out the weakest or the most beautiful, but they make the news. Become myth, legend, and terror.
I think if I’d been an alpha, I wouldn’t have come out into the world at all. I’d have stayed home just like a good little omega would. The temptations must be insurmountable. You’d have to have the willpower of a nutcase.
I have a certain influence over human men, they do tend to get a little dazzled by me. It’s something I’ve tried to avoid, just in case I get too fond of it. To the extent that I can control it at all, which isn’t much, so mostly it makes me nervous. But all that’s still nothing compared to what might happen if an alpha comes across me unprepared.
It’s hard to find you
rself, and your power, beautiful when you’re aware of how easily it could hurt someone. Whether as an omega in the pack, or as a shifter out in the world, I know it’s my first and last duty to keep everybody safe. Send me to space, if that’s what it takes.
Most of the shifters living among humans, at least the ones I’ve come across, are neither alpha nor omega. Just run of the mill shifters, nothing too magical about them three weeks out of the month. Between my seasonal heats and having to keep everything secret about the way my body functions, I do end up feeling quite vulnerable.
Which is why I hate it when strangers come onto campus, like now. Having to smell each new person, feel them out, assess if they’re friend or foe, predator or prey, trustworthy or malicious.
It’s exhausting, and it’s time-consuming, and it’s not something I’ve ever been able to turn off. One of the best things about staying with the same class through Flight School has been that I could actually find peace in such a large group of one-time strangers.
But now the limestone walls of the courtyard echoed with strange voices, and the carved banisters in the faculty offices bore the smells and fingerprints of strangers, and even the bunks in the common rooms, twenty down either side, started to smell strange as their former owners’ scents faded. The place was becoming unrecognizable right before my eyes, and it kept me continually on edge.
Not to mention the lingering social weirdness. The other students slipped away into the world again, leaving just their crumbs and memories. They weren’t so sad to see me go.
Or vice versa, frankly. I knew I wasn’t the only one whose future was riding on this mission, but of course I alone knew my situation was also the most desperate. There weren’t any other monsters here in hiding, trying to stay out of familial servitude. Concentrating on my own fears had kept me from noticing just how intense the competition had been.
After me and Alden, the next best are Darius and Philippa, then the rest of their DC crew. After that it’s a free-for-all, the best and brightest from all over the country and the world, fighting it out for post-grad placements. Sniping at each other about who got the highest starting salary, the best signing bonus. Ugly stuff. And always with this faint air of embarrassment, just paper-thin, covering up their immense pride and desperation to win.
I wondered, not for the last time, whether this was part of how the duty had fallen to the five of us. There isn’t a striver among us, really. I only wanted to be better than Alden, and Alden probably couldn’t help being perfect, anyway. Pippa, the Sarge, and Captain H were more invested in reaching their own personal best than Alden or me. Maybe that was why they were the best.
Maybe the committee took into account the calm in Pippa’s poised movements as she did her experiments, or the captain walking the corridors like a poem in motion, or Margot out in the training yard at half past midnight, practicing her flying kicks.
Out of us all, the only truly awkward or restless individual is yours truly, at least in my own opinion, and I knew it must show on my face. But the one time I confided this to Pippa, she just looked at me scornfully and asked if I honestly felt there was a person alive who didn’t feel that way at least some the time. Like a fraud, blundering through life with all the confidence of a cartoon coyote before he looks down and realizes nothing’s holding him up.
I said no, most people probably feel that way, now that you mention it. Except Alden Armstrong. She’d rolled her eyes, because all roads lead to Alden and they always have.
“But you don’t really want to see him scared,” she’d said, looking into my eyes soberly, and I’d admitted that was the worst thing I could imagine. I felt truly ill at the thought of him faltering. Like if that happened, anything could happen. Chaos would reign.
“Good. Me neither,” she’d nodded. And I knew it wasn’t because she harbored any of my intense love, hate, or both, for him. But over those five years he’d come to mean something for all of us, collectively. In one way or another, Alden symbolized something I could never have said out loud. Perfection is possible.
How could you not take some glory in that, just the slightest bit? He made hoping so much easier.
And now here we are, just like that coyote. Look down, what do you see? Nothing at all.
The blue Earth, wrapped in her white shroud, turning like a sleeping giant under blankets of gold and green and brown, calling us back home whenever we get the chance.
And we wait for as long as that might take.
Alden Armstrong is the first to unstrap, which puts me to shame. I’d imagined so many times how I’d be the first to float effortlessly across the cabin in zero-g, like the boy in Willy Wonka or the uncle in Mary Poppins. Sipping imaginary tea from imaginary teacups, like when we were kids, sitting on the bottom of the swimming pool.
But no. There he goes, a god in flight. They used to call him The Bronze, Philippa told me once, and in my mind, I knew exactly what they meant. Like that statue of Apollo out in the Flight School gardens. It was my second favorite, because it stood so close to Artemis, his twin sister. The huntress, with her wolves.
With far more whimsy than I’m used to seeing, Alden careens around the cabin, holding out one fist like a caped superhero. And to my surprised delight, he bungles it terribly, slamming into a bulkhead after pushing off much too hard with those thick quads, and sending himself into a spin.
His smile is dazzling and wild, even as he hurtles toward me. I open my arms instinctually and catch him as tenderly as I can before sending him spinning off again, like a beach ball at a summer concert.
I unstrap, and hear the others doing the same. We take our time practicing. Flying around without hurting ourselves, or anyone else, takes longer to learn than we’d thought.
Pippa remembers to turn on the cameras just as an irritated producer’s voice tells her to, and she gives us a warning before complying. Then we’re zooming across in front of the largest lens, one by one, making goofy faces or just beaming. And once we’ve gotten the giggles out, the work can begin.
Standing at the shuttle, waving to the crowd, I felt something was off before I registered what it was. And then, a glimpse was enough for me to turn back to face the crowd, cold as stone.
Alden had stopped waving, and merely held his hand up in farewell. Great fat tears rolling silently down his cheeks, the cameras just too far away to catch it. With the wind whipping our scarves, hair, and jackets around in that morning squall, I doubt anyone saw his tears at all. Just me up here and Darius down there, watching The Bronze weep as he said goodbye.
By the time we were inside, prepping for liftoff, Alden was all business. He caught me looking at him with something like concern, and he immediately straightened up, stripping down to his jumpsuit and fixing me with a judging eye.
“Come here,” he said, and checked all my straps and closures briskly. When he was done, he clapped my shoulders awkwardly and stepped back, looking me over.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Alden said, brusquely, risking just one brief look in my eyes before he pasted that fake first-chair smile back on and we went back to our usual places.
The Golden Boy—future commander—and the shifter kid who just washed up on shore.
4
Me & The Moon
Alden
Liftoff was pretty much exactly like the simulator, only instead of sitting alone, smelling my own sweat, I got to smell everybody else all at once.
Julian smells like a garden, he always has, like rich earth and pine needles. I never really thought about it until now, but after five years it’s about as familiar as my own body. Thinking about Julian Forrester, that’s Darius’ department. Lord, that boy can fall in love. I envy that.
Now Forrester’s everywhere, in every breath I take. A garden of delights. Campfires and secrets. You get to know people’s scent so well after five years in such intimate circumstances. Even the ones you never really thought about.
Mach-33 forces us back against our seats, an
d I get a little delirious. I imagine smelling Julian somewhere random, after we haven’t seen each other for a few years, and being yanked back to exactly this moment, in this capsule, in space.
Seeing him here felt like the first time as we float free, the excitement in his scent, no fear at all. A thrilling hungry hardness to him, like a boy waiting for his first kiss. Waiting, as always, to catch me looking.
I turn slow circles in the air, marveling at the strength in my muscles with nothing to hold them back or down.
We’re not quite all the way out of Earth’s gravity, still pointed away, rocket thrusters fighting against it with all their might. But I’ve wanted for years, and most of all in this particular weightless moment, to look down on Earth from here and say goodbye.
Goodbye, and good riddance.
All the astronauts back in the Apollo days talked about something called the overview effect. When you see Earth from orbit, as few have ever done, all the pieces fit together, and you realize how small and petty your fears and tribulations have truly been.
It sounds like magic to me. Like realistic magic. It sounds like becoming whole.
“Every choice you make is preparation for your confirmation hearing,” Father used to say, in the voice that sounds like he’s joking but is anything but. It’s another directive for which I’m grateful, even if I admit that Julian’s brand of self-directed weirdness draws me in as much as it confuses me.
If you never lose control, you never get embarrassed or have to apologize. People believe you, and do as you say, when they know you choose your words carefully.
Take Darius. Without me there, he would have become an alcoholic before we were out of our teens. He’s a hungry, thirsty, horny, voluptuous animal. Darius, with his huge heart and a perverse streak a mile wide. But because he knows how much I love and respect him, and that I live by rules that tend to have happy endings, he goes along with me. We never drink or take drugs, beyond a glass of Champagne or wine with dinner. Anything else, and you never know what might happen. I don’t aim to find out, and I’m not so keen on my best friend finding out either. We have our whole lives in which to make mistakes, later.
