“Lean back for me, dear, and try not to flinch.” She held up a silver thing that looked like a piercing gun. “This won’t hurt.”
I don’t know why, but I trusted her.
She pointed the gun into my left eye and I had to fight my reflexes to avoid blinking. A red light came on, filling my eye with its glow. I felt my eye getting warm. Then the light was gone. She moved to the other eye and did the same.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I’ve changed your eye color. It’s pale pink, now. That should also enhance your night vision, as you’ll be able to take in more infrared light.”
I looked into the mirror and saw I had pale pink eyes. They went with the dark purple hair, in a weird way.
“I’m afraid this next onewillbe uncomfortable. Hold still.” She had another gun in her hand and she aimed it behind my ear. When she pressed it, a sharp pain exploded in my skull.
“Ach, that’s horrid!” I complained.
“I’m sorry, dear. It’s very important, though. If the betas see you speaking in your native language, they will think you are an outsider, even with the universal translator changing what you say. Your lips will move wrong. Your colloquialisms won’t translate. So I’ve implanted a language chip into your brain. Now, you’re speaking Andarian, and you can understand it perfectly, too.”
“I’m talking another lingo? But it sounds the same, to me.”
“Yes. That’s the way your brain is processing it all, for you.”
Weird. “Okay. But any more shitty surprises and I’ll bang you in the face,” I told her.
“There’s no need for empty threats, dear. You haven’t had your combat training, yet, anyway.”
“Training?”
“Yes. It will come after I’ve finished sorting out your look.” She walked around me, obviously assessing me in some way. “Clothing will make a huge difference.”
She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a pair of black shiny PVC-looking pants.
“Syntex. Synthetic latex. It stretches around you so it will fit like a glove. This stuff is also knife-proof.”
I put them on. They stretched easily when I was getting my feet through the leg holes, and they hugged my skin once they were on. They looked exactly like PVC. And now I had a camel toe. Great.
“And here’s a top.” She passed me a cottony, loose sleeveless top with huge arm holes that would show my sideboob and everything several centimeters below it.
“This is going to be a problem every time I move,” I pointed out, waving my hand through the huge hole.
“You’re not revealing anything obscene by our standards. It’s the current fashion amongst people your age. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. My job is to ensure you blend in with your cover story.”
Ugh. I’d get used to it.
“I just don’t like having my chebs showing, even if it’s from the sides.” In my experience, men took any opportunity to stare at them.
“Try not to think about it until you get used to it,” Larla said. It wasn’t exactly comforting. “We’re all done with your looks. Every alpha on the ship will be trying to bond with you, now.”
“Bond? Like... James Bond?” I was baffled.
“No. Haven’t they explained what you are, yet?”
“Someone waffled something about an omega. And breeding. God knows what they were on about.”
“You’re an omega. Everyone else on the ship are alphas. Alphas and omegas are... opposites. And opposites attract. Alphas can’t resist omegas. And in Epsilon society—where we’re going—an omega would usually be bonded to an alpha.”
“Bonding...?” That word again.
“When an alpha male and an omega female have sex, a knot usually forms. That’s where the male’s cock swells up like a knot that keeps it inside the female for a while after climax. There can be three outcomes. Either they just have sex, or they mate—get the omega pregnant—or they bond. Once an alpha and omega have marked each other with a mating bite, they are bonded. That means their souls have intertwined.”
“Until one fucks his pal behind his bird’s back and they split up.”
“There’s no splitting up. Pair-bonding is forever.”
Forever? That was a long time. “Even if he hits her?” I was aghast.
“Yes. Or if she tries to poison him. To part would be soul death. They would pine for each other.”
“Fuck, that’s serious shit.”
I didn’t ever want to bond with someone like that.