Page 252 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Ilya keeps setting it in the bushes like its family will come back for it if he's patient.

But no one's coming for it. It will die. I give it two days, maybe three. It's too young. It needs its mother, and its mother is gone, because that's how it works.

Everything here is too young and its mother is gone.

That's the whole fucking story.

"Ilya!"

Ilya's head snaps up.

Cosima rounds the shed wall with her chin high, long platinum-blonde hair snarled by the wind into a mess she'd kill me for pointing out. She has a soft spot for Ilya and no one else.

"Let me see," she says, her violet eyes sweeping over him.

Ilya shifts, holding his cupped hand toward her. His glass eyepieces catch the gray light as he looks over at her—even crouching, he's taller—and even through the mask, the hope is pathetically visible in the tilt of his head.

"Its crop is empty," she announces. "It needs to eat."

Ilya makes a low sound of agreement through the mask.

"I'll get some baby food. Stay here."

She gives him a peck on the side of his gas mask, quick and careless, like it's his actual cheek and not Soviet-era leather. He stops breathing, the mechanical rasp of his mask going silent.

Then she stalks off toward the east wing, and Ilya watches her go like he's in love with her already.

He's fucked.

Cosima shoots me a look as she passes me. "Help him," she mutters.

"With what, exactly?" I ask, but she's through the door already.

Ilya's breathing starts up again, shaky and uneven through the filters, and he tilts his head down toward the pigeon like maybe if he focuses hard enough on the bird he can pretend the rest of him isn't vibrating from a two-second kiss on the side of a mask.

His hand moves like it's going to touch the spot she kissed, but it's full of baby pigeon and he doesn't have another hand. He lowers it.

I look away because there are things in this place I don't want to see and that was one of them.

Cosima's an omega, designated early because of whatever the fuck happened to her before she came here, like most of us. She already has the typical soft omega look that catches the eye of the creepy fucking beta staff, who write her up as well-fed like it's a problem instead of a miracle in a place like this.

She'll get adopted one day because omega is more important than not being a baby, and then I don't know what Ilya will do. He's an alpha and he follows her around like a giant puppy. I don't believe in fated mate fairy tale bullshit, but if it's real, it's them.

He'll die from a broken heart.

Because he'll never get adopted. And neither will I.

Foreigners want babies, if they're not omegas. They come with translators and leave with a bundle they can rename and turn into one of them.

We're too old.

Too fucked up.

So we sit in this yard and we wait for nothing, and sometimes Ilya finds a hurt creature and we pretend, for an afternoon, that something small and fragile can survive in this place.

Cosima returns with a paper cup of strained pureed chicken. She sits beside Ilya and they work together, Ilya holding the pigeon steady while it flaps its stubby flipper-like wings and Cosima feeds it from her fingertip.

My eyes flick in the direction of footsteps before I've fully registered someone is coming.