‘It’s not like what yous twos have been through, but gads it hurt so bad when I found out my mammy didn’t love me as much as she always said she did.’

Oh no. Jamming Joeys. He heard himself not making up some sorrowful sob story but telling the truth he’d never told anyone before.

The time he was playing hide and seek and his mammy, not knowing he was there, started telling one of his alpha dads how ashamed she was that her only child was turning up beta on every test they did. And then his alpha dad promising that if he was given another chance, his mammy could forget all about the beta failure and have a whole host of alpha babies.

His voice just kept going. It wouldn’t stop.

He was telling these alphas he’d only met today everything about his childhood pain. How his parents always surrounded him with love and reassurance. A mix of cheerleading that one day his true alpha nature would emerge, and comfort that even if he stayed a beta that didn’t change anything about who he was or how much they loved him. And once he knew all their smiles and hugs were lies it was impossible to trust anyone.

As a teenager, he thought he developed the emotional maturity to just accept that everyone had bad days when they had regrets, and he’d just been unlucky to overhear one of mammy’s. It didn’t mean his mammy secretly hated him. He couldn’t let it overshadow every other day they’d had together where she’d been constantly supportive. But other things came up and he realised that the hurt shocked rejected kid of that day was a permanent part of him.

Hairy was frowning, looking as if he was concentrating really hard to try and understand every word Bikey said. Aki’s handsome face didn’t give any emotions away, but he didn’t tell Bikey to shut up, instead he asked questions as if he was really interested.

Bikey now heard himself explaining the particular traditions of his people.

No one wanted to be given an anthropology lesson before a night of uninhibited decadence.

But still he kept talking. Telling that how officially they obeyed the World Government decrees, the same as everyone else, but in reality, democracy and equality were ignored in favour of having pretty omegas rule them. That his mammy was considered one of the prettiest for generations, and when she’d decided she wanted a child, she’d somehow got away with going beyond the normal max of three, and choosing nine alphas to spend her heat with.

Bikey shouted out the word ‘nine’ several times. Maybe nine times for proper emphasis.

Please don’t say why having so many parents is a problem, he pleaded with himself.

‘We’re a teeny community, and having nine dads, means that half of the alphas around act like we’re related! It’s not like a beta has easy options with alphas to begin with! And the ones that I am not related to, are friends with the other alphas so no one wants to upset them by going with me! If they were really my brothers, cousins, third uncle three times removed, whatever, that’d be one thing, but with some of them it’s soooo obvious we’re not the same blood. Like we don’t even look like the same species! But our sappy stupid culture means that as they were all there when I was conceived, they’re all my dads.’

He watched his fist thump the counter several times as if his hand belonged to someone else.

‘And Mammy says the same things as all omegas say: that alphas are only useful for opening pickle jars and sex, and they’re only actually good at one of those. But she still wants an alpha child instead of a beta one! And then she’s like considered really progressive because all my life she’s had parental meetings with all my dads. Every time I got tested to see if I was an alpha yet, they were all called in to receive the result together. Every single thing to do with my education was discussed. And it hasn’t even stopped now!’

Do NOT tell them what the last meeting was about. No, no, no, no, do NOT say that.

Bikey’s mouth was open, his tongue kept waggling, words kept emerging.

‘They had an emergency gathering about me hooking up with alphas! Can you believe that? I was forced to be there for half of it, listening to them all blame themselves for me. And telling me that my rebellion, experimentation, discovery, whatever weird thing they wanted to label my sex life, had gone on long enough, and I needed to start behaving like an adult and date other betas. They went on about how I was representing all betas coming here and that if I mucked up, I’d be letting every single beta in the whole world down! It’s so insulting them thinking they needed to warn me not to ruin my one chance by flirting with alphas in the locker room! As if I’ve got no control of my libido and can’t be professional. I’d never want to hook up with a team mate.’

His eyes focused for a moment on his watch. The hands had swapped around and were moving oddly. Or he had just spent over an hour ranting at these two gorgeous alpha orphans about how the big headache in his life was having too many parents.

He needed a smooth unnoticeable change of subject that would make the alphas forget his long tirade. He downed another shot to help him think better.

It worked! He was immediately struck by inspiration.

‘Aki! You need to be more positive. Your list is all full of ‘do nots’ you need ‘dos’. That’s basic psychology. You motivate people. Tell them to think in terms of opportunities. We learned that really early. Have you never heard of it? Poor Hairy needs to be told how great he is, and encouraged. Who wants to wake up to a list of all the things they’re doing wrong every single blessed day? Plus the humiliation of everyone who comes to your home seeing it. Some of those things are really embarrassing! Hairy doesn't want everyone to know he chews his toenails. Although that does take some impressive flexibility...but yes, that's a good example of how you should say please use toenail clippers instead of all your neagitve do nots.’

The next moment Bikey was in front of the board rewriting Aki’s rules. Hairy was laughing and clapping. Aki was standing beside him and not looking as if he fully appreciated Bikey’s impromptu psychology lesson.

'I'm older than you. Your senior,' Bikey said to Aki. 'You need to listen to me if you want to grow as a person. It's important to learn from more experienced people. That's the rule you need on your board: listen to Bikey, he knows more about life than you.'

In his mind this was going to lead to a silky seduction.

But somehow, the next thing he was fully aware of was standing on the kitchen counter singing out the Beta Rights anthem. He didn’t even realise he knew any of the lyrics, so that was impressive in a way. Unless he didn’t know them and was just singing made up words about popcorn, betas and how great he was.

Time at last slowed down. Really slowed down. As he fell off the counter. But of course beautiful, muscles-everywhere, Hairy ran forward and caught him. Finally it’d happened. This was the moment he’d been waiting to happen all day. Super sexy time would begin. The contents of Bikey’s stomach swirled and he vomited all over Hairy’s incredibly gorgeous chest.