There was a nod from his mate, then a quiet sigh as hands brushed across his temple. Solar felt for his forehead and Helios knew in the glow of his eyes that Solar was searching for signs of deterioration in his being. For the monster to return, slip into their lives and take him away. His emotions betrayed him with a tasty dollop of love and a sour tinge of guilt.
The next day, a slice of pink was on his plate, a fresh cut of peach that wept sugary juices from the best greenhouse in the city. And he'd dug into it eagerly, chewed and swallowed flesh that was not just as sweet or as juicy as the one in his memory. In fact, it seemed tasteless to his memories, watery and plain.
To the doctors that later tested his blood in search of a cure, he'd said, 'a peach', his eyes closing to the memory, 'a peach saved me.' But Helios was stubborn, had stupidity was in the form of rigid denial. And so, he'd ignored his own concerns, avoided the thoughts of the peach and chalked it up to the insanity.
He was safe and alive. He was free. And that was enough. He didn't need to solve the mysteries of his time as one of the Lonely. And he did not need to know what happened in the wastelands. It wasn't until much later, months later, when his memories unfurled into dreams of her when he realised how wrong he was.
It began soft. The giggles and the tease; the laughter that was so pretty it hurt him, made his heart beat twice as fast and his cheeks glow with redness. It was happy sounds that curled into dulcet tones and dripped sweetly into his mind like dollops of honey on fluffy pancakes soaking with warming butter.
But then it transformed, stretched into the caresses that started at his cheeks, fingers curled into his hair. Then to a hand that travelled down his body sent a rush of shivers down his spine and exploded at his lower belly so hot that it made his cock throb and his soul leap into his mouth. He was panting, writhing in bed at the sensations of something monstrous, something building.
The arousal spun out of control the moment the peach hit his tongue. Generous and tart, it was a feast that flooded him with emotions, that made him so full he felt as if he'd tasted sin. The shudders of throbbing, quivering pleasure were ricocheting across his body, twisting between the apex of his thighs. The sensation was so divine he couldn't stop the tears from leaking, stop his mouth from parting to bodiless open sounds.
He saw her last. An Alpha of generous breast and curves, of tanned muscular skin and raven curls. Her face was never there, concealed by the shadows and gaps of his memory. But her body against his skin was swimming with a connection that was so overwhelming fear struck him. His explosion was horrifying, and he'd woken to pants soaked in semen and his mind clouded with her scent.
The peach was a woman.
The shame he felt had been indescribable, the guilt he had for betraying his mates so devastating that the nausea had flooded his body. Helios had spent that morning against the toilet, emptying bile and saliva for a woman he could not remember. The worst part of it all was the lack of memory, the inability to decide if the taste had been purely innocent.
Surely, it was not.
He didn't know what had concurred between them, and if something had the lab would pick it up in the check-ups and the blood tests. But for a breathless, harrying hour, he'd palmed his fingers against his belly and prayed that he wasn't pregnant with an Alpha's child.
He couldn't face them after, had stammered a response when Rowan's haughty laugh had sparked on sight when he'd seen the wet spot one day. The dreams never stop coming despite his anxiety, stress and tears. And she crept into his mind with a ferocity that he did not understand.
'Is this for me?' was the rumbled groan as his mate took the head of his cock into his mouth, closed wet lips around sensitive glands. 'You're such a horny little mate.'
'It is,' had been his firm reply, hips jolting against his lover's face, and yet his mind was on another.
When he came, his eyes had rolled to the memory of a stranger. He'd locked himself up and cried, felt so angry at himself that he couldn't bear to see them. It was only Elysian's gentle hand on his face and a murmured plea for him to tell them the truth, that he revealed it all when it got too much to bear.
"I want her," he'd sobbed, "the woman in the wastelands. She saved me, and now I feel like I've been poisoned. She did something. She did. She touched me. There's no way she didn't. No way I can feel her so vivid on my tongue. She took advantage of me. I can remember," he hiccupped, "the taste of her."
And perhaps that was the beginning of the end.
"The situation is worsening," the scientist had said, stood facing a long table of their best leaders. Their kingdom was growing, the population thriving with newly established systems, but as the year crawled by, problems had arisen. New issues that they now had to face. "Children are not born. And all those that come to be die within days, they are weaker."
"We have access to Alpha reproductive fluids, that should—"
"We have tried with what little we have stored. The fluids of donors do not take fruit. They cannot survive against the body's natural defence systems." The doctor shook his head. And Helios stared at the vampire, traced the circles under his eyes. "But we have bigger problems, more are transforming steadily into the Lonely. It is now a prevailing disease that occurs within our people."
"How can this be?" was the angry response. An uproar danced through the crowd and Helios's eyes swept to his king.
Klaus was stoic, the fury clamped tight between clenched jaws, and his eyes so sharp they seemed to claw. His father had been the first to truly turn, the first to transform into a monstrous being of blood and gore. And Klaus had killed him with a bullet to the head when it became clear that he could not be saved from the rot of his flesh, and the expose of his ribs.
He became a murderer and that had made him King.
Klaus had risen to the task with anger in his eyes, the Lonely now a battle etched with revenge. With the death of the monarch, he'd given orders for all to delve into the search for a solution which led to this meeting which Helios prayed could provide the answer.
It had to, especially with his guilt as the only survivor of the transformation to become Lonely.
"Our experiments have borne fruit," the vampire reassured, and this time a smile spilled across his lips, so much brighter that Helios sat taller in his seat. His pearls shifting against his skin, Rowan's hand holding his. "There's only one answer. Omegas need Alphas."