The Night Movers - Season 2 - Ep 2. Part 1 (Patreon)

Apparently now Patreon is accusing me of peddling C*S*A somehow from my last post so I'm splitting the chapter in half because the only thing I can think of is the flashback being in the same scene as the sex scene?

This is unbeta'd/unedited. Ridley is falling apart and Titus is putting him back together in the only way he knows how.

“What do you think will happen after we present?” 

Ren turned to look at him in the darkness, the full moon cutting a swath of light across her face, illuminating the forced smile neither of them really believed. “We’ll be fine,” she lied, putting emphasis behind her words like she could make them both believe if she said it with enough conviction. “Not every alpha is a monster.” 

The inflection left a question mark dangling ominously at the end of her statement. Not every alpha is a monster…right? Statistically speaking, that was probably true. But, statistically speaking, not a hundred percent of lions would eat you if given the chance, but enough that Ridley didn’t want to chance being trapped with one for life. 

“We both know that’s a lie,” Ridley whispered.

He was an omega…or he would be anyway. That meant he wouldn’t just be trapped with the lion, he’d be forced to let it breed him or sell him or use him in any way it saw fit. Ren’s fate wouldn’t be any better just—maybe—different. If they presented separately. If they presented as something other than twin omegas. But they both knew the likelihood of that was slim to none. 

They were as alike as any set of fraternal twins could be. Same hair, same eyes, same freckles…same delicate bone structure. They were both pretty in an unconventional way. Would probably have been considered beautiful before the world fell apart. If not for the stigma that surrounded red-haired omegas, they’d have been highly sought after, fought over even, by more than just the brothels and auctioneers. But that’s just not the world they lived in. 

Ren laid her head on his shoulder.

 “Maybe things will be different,” she said, soft as static.

Ridley shifted on the lumpy mattress, only wide enough to fit them if they squeezed together. But it had to be small to fit in the room they called home. Small seemed almost generous honestly. If the two stood side-by-side, arms outstretched, they could span the entirety of the space. Still, it was enough for a bed, a tiny fridge, a hot plate, and a small room that held a toilet and a shower that they didn’t even have to share with others in their tenement. 

It wasn’t much. But it was all they needed. It had a door that locked. It had a roof to keep the rain out. It had the two of them together. Safe…ish. 

Ridley tried to ignore the pit forming in his stomach. That used to be enough.

He moved closer to his sister. “That’s the problem. It will be different for us. You and I both know what happens to omegas who look like us.” His breath caught as something scurried in the corner of the room, both of them going still to listen. 

After a moment, they both relaxed. It was most likely a mouse. It didn’t sound big enough to be anything more substantial. Neither of them moved to investigate, even though Ridley’s belly was snarling with hunger. Sometimes the rats were stupid enough to show themselves and, when they did, Ridley and Ren got to eat something more substantial than the government slop the mission disciples distributed at the hall once a month.

Ridley wasn’t complaining though. They only had this place now because of Ren. She’d bargained for it…was still paying for it somehow. What she’d given, Ridley never asked and Ren refused to say. It was probably better that way. Whatever it was would only make Ridley feel guilty and Ren feel ashamed even though she had no reason to be. 

When the sound of skittering dissipated, Ridley closed his eyes. “You know they’ll ship us off to the auction block together. They’ll sell us as a set. You know what they’ll make us do. To others…” Ridley shivered. “To each other. If we’re lucky, they’ll at least make it so we can never breed and bring another hostage into this fucking nightmare. But if not…” 

He let the threat hang in the air between them. 

“At least we’ll be together,” Ren said softly, taking his hand and threading their fingers together. “That way I can protect you. Just like always.”

 Just like always…

“If you’d be honest with yourself you’d admit it,” Ridley said. 

“Admit what?” 

Ridley huffed out a sound that was bitter even to his own ears. “You know we escaped one hell just to fall into another.”

Usually, he was willing to play this game, to let her placate him. It kept the nightmares at bay…the sporadic, barely there images that always showed him just enough to make him dread sleep almost as much as he dreaded being awake. 

“Wish…” Ren said, squeezing his fingers like she was trying to pull him from his spiraling thoughts. 

“Don’t,” Ridley said, hating himself for not just letting her have this. She already did everything for him and now he was even making comforting him hard for her. “Don’t call me that. Not right now.” 

Wish. 

Short for wishbone. Because they were two halves of the same whole. Separating them would ruin everything. It was silly. But she’d been calling him that forever. For as long as he could remember anyway.

“Why are you so worried tonight?” she asked, her voice growing in urgency, though still quiet. “Did you…see something?” 

The walls were too thin to talk above a whisper and when you were as poor as they were, the best currency was information. Nobody was ever trustworthy. Not really. 

She didn’t have to elaborate on what she meant by ‘see’. 

“Even if I had, it wouldn’t matter,” he muttered. “My visions never make any sense.” 

“They will,” Ren assured him. “Mama said our gifts would get stronger as we got older.” 

Ridley didn’t want to talk about their ‘gifts’. It was just one more reminder that their only value was in what they could offer an alpha. There was no part of them an alpha couldn’t–and wouldn’t–commodify if given a chance. Alphas always thought they had a right to anything an omega could offer. Their bodies. Their labor. Their freedom. Their lives. 

“What if we don’t end up together? What if somehow I lose you?” Ridley whispered, tears springing to his eyes. “We’ve never been apart. What if we can only…sense each other when we’re close? I don’t think I could live with the silence.”

Ren was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “You won’t lose me. Even if you do…I’ll find you. You know I will. I always do.”

Ridley felt like someone had hollowed out his insides. Like if he looked down he’d see some big gaping hole that would explain the dread and emptiness leaking from his pores like perspiration. 

“Let's just go to sleep,” Ridley mumbled. 

Ren didn’t release his hand, just rolled onto her side bringing Ridley’s arm with her. He curled around her instinctively, pressing his nose into her neck, inhaling her scent…orange blossoms. He breathed her in like fresh air, letting her familiar smell slow his fluttering heartbeat. 

Before Ren started going out at night, doing whatever it is she did to earn this place, they lived under the overpass with the other outcasts. After they’d fled the compound, Ridley had spent every single night, barely sleeping, curled up against his sister just like this, his face pressed against her back, arm an iron bar across her waist, terrified that each night would be the night they found them, the night someone ripped them apart. Away from each other and from freedom.

The silence stretched on for so long, Ridley started to drift, jumping slightly when Ren said, “Look, I don’t know how this works. How any of it works. I don’t know why sometimes you just know things, see things. I don’t know how sometimes I can just…feel it when something’s wrong with you. Even before you say it. Even before you know it.”

Ridley gripped her tighter. Maybe he should be embarrassed. Seventeen-years-old and still clinging to his sister like a toddler clinging to his mother’s skirt. But he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t lived in fear. 

Ren had taken his memories of the compound, but not his fear. 

Fear of being found. 

Fear of not being found.

In the beginning, some memories bled through. Not wholly formed, more like something you caught from the corner of your eye but when you looked, nothing was there. Ridley didn’t have to remember the compound to know that living there had brought a level of comfort. No, not comfort–survival. Food. Clothing. Shelter. Water that didn’t smell like rotten eggs. 

But with that had come a different trepidation. The fear of their father’s wrath. The fallout had always been inevitable. It was a foregone conclusion that Ren and Ridley would one day present as omegas. The signs had all been there. As he’d gotten older, Ren had told him the stories. Some as a comfort, others as a warning. 

While she never directly told Ridley that his father hated him, it was known around the third district just how the Faithful Few felt about male omegas. It was a strange dichotomy. They were somehow too sacred to kill, but too much of a stain on the family to keep. Life was the only courtesy the Faithful Few were willing to give a male omega. Nothing more. 

Not like the female omegas. They were sacred…holy…holy bargaining chips that an alpha could strategically use to his advantage. 

Had they stayed, Ren would be coveted, fought over, but inevitably, she’d have been handed over to the alpha with the most seniority. A gift for his loyalty. She’d be forced to lay with some withered, ancient alpha who treated her like a fucking brood mare, nurse, nanny and housekeeper. And his sister was far too powerful to ever serve an alpha. She’d have poisoned him with a smile on her face and laughed while she burned. 

As disgusted as Ridley’s father was to have an omega son, he’d been elated to know he could use his daughter as a stepping stone to gain favor with their leader. Elden Graves. A man who still lurked somewhere nearby on the compound, looming like a ghost, constantly haunting Ridley’s thoughts. Sometimes, he wished Ren hadn’t messed with his memories. Maybe if he knew the whole truth, his imagination wouldn’t try so hard to terrify him when it filled in the blanks. 

Elden Graves… 

The name had always sounded made up. 

Too biblical, too cruel.

“No one names a kid that and expects them to turn out decent,” Ren used to say. “He was born with his villain name pre-installed.”

His sister’s words played on a loop in his head. 

I’ll always find you. 

It was a nice idea. But was it true? Because no matter how much Ridley loved Ren, he’d never told her the whole truth. That he never dreamed alone. That when he saw things–scary things, future things–it was always her hand in his. Her voice calling his name. Her light, cutting through the white noise that filled his head.