The Sterling Acquisition : A Steamy MM Alpha/Omega Corporate Dystopia Romance (Manufactured Mates Book 1), page 31
“Actually,” Tallulah said, her gaze shifting between them with newfound interest, “I think it might be better if I spoke with you separately. Orion first—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than Orion intended, startling even himself. The thought of being separated from Dante, even temporarily, sent something close to panic shooting through his chest. “We stay together.”
Tallulah’s eyebrows rose, but before she could respond, Lilac leaned over and whispered something in her ear. Whatever she said made the older woman’s expression shift from surprise to amusement, then to something that might have been concern.
“Never mind,” Tallulah said slowly, settling back in her chair. “You stay together. For everyone’s safety.”
The phrasing was odd, but Orion was too relieved to question it. The panic that had spiked at the thought of separation was already fading, leaving him feeling embarrassed by the intensity of his reaction.
“Now then,” Tallulah continued, her tone taking on a gravity that made Orion’s attention sharpen. “What do you two know about the Adjustment? The real history, not the corporate sanitized version.”
Orion frowned. “Syn-V-7, it was a virus disguised as a vaccine. Gensyn released it seventy years ago and created the designation system we have now. Why?”
“And what do you know about bonding? About how Alphas and Omegas pair?”
“Gensyn uses bio-marker synchronization,” Dante interjected, slipping into that annoying corporate cadence. “Pharmaceutical interventions to align pheromone signatures and establish claiming bonds. SVI prefers public submission displays and physical branding to declare ownership. Both systems require documentation and corporate oversight.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Orion asked, feeling a little confused.
“Everything,” Tallulah said. “It has to do with everything. Because what the corporations don’t want you to know—what they’ve spent seventy years making sure nobody knows—is that they didn’t create the designation system. They perverted it.”
“Like with Project Tether?”
“Still thinking too much like them companies,” she shook her head.
Orion felt a chill run down his spine. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the Primal Triad,” Tallulah said, and something in her voice made the words feel like an incantation. “The real bonding process. The one that happens outside corporate control, outside their understanding. The one that makes everything they’ve built irrelevant.”
She maneuvered her wheelchair closer, studying them both with sharp eyes. “But before we get into all that academic nonsense, I need to see something. Dante, tilt your head. Let me see your neck.”
Orion felt Dante go still beside him. “What?”
“Your neck,” Tallulah repeated patiently, like she was talking to a particularly slow child. “Lilac mentioned you had some interesting... markings. I want to see for myself.”
Dante’s hand moved to cover the bite mark, and Tallulah’s eyes lit up with delight.
“Oh, don’t be shy now, corporate boy. After everything you two have been through, you’re gonna get modest about a little love bite?”
Heat flooded Orion’s face as he realized what she was asking for. “That’s not—we don’t—”
“Humor an old woman,” Tallulah said, though it wasn’t really a request.
Dante glanced at Orion, something unreadable in his expression, then slowly moved his hand away and tilted his head to expose the mark Orion had left on his neck.
Tallulah leaned forward in her wheelchair, examining the bite with the focused attention of someone who knew exactly what she was looking for. After a moment, she sat back and let out a laugh that was equal parts amused and amazed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said, shaking her head. “Lilac was right. You two really did it.”
“Did what?” Orion demanded, embarrassment quickly giving way to irritation at being kept in the dark.
“Completed the Primal Triad,” Tallulah said simply. “Something that hasn’t happened in... oh, last I heard, probably forty years or so. Something the corporations have been trying to prevent since the day they figured out what the virus did to us.”
She maneuvered her wheelchair to a cabinet behind her desk, withdrawing what looked like an old journal, its pages yellowed with age. “See, boys, what they don’t teach you in corporate school is that Syn-V-7 didn’t create the designation system. It activated something that was already there. Something old. Something that had its own rules about how Alphas and Omegas were supposed to bond.”
Her finger traced over the yellowed pages as she settled the journal on her lap. “Rules that put the real power in the Omega’s hands, not the Alpha’s. Rules that made corporate ownership impossible because you can’t own someone who owns you right back.”
She looked up, meeting both their eyes with an expression that was equal parts sympathetic and determined. “You’ve completed the Primal Triad. And Orion? You’re not the claimed one in this equation. You’re the claimer.”
Orion stared at her, his brain struggling to process what she just said. The words seemed to hit him in waves, each realization more shocking than the last.
The Primal Triad. An ancient bonding process. Rules that put power in Omega hands.
You’re the claimer.
He felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath him, his entire understanding of the world inverted. For years—his entire life—he’d been taught that Omegas were meant to be claimed, owned, controlled. That his only value lay in his eventual submission to an Alpha. That his designation made him inherently less powerful, less autonomous, less worthy of respect.
He’d fought against that narrative with everything he had, determined to never be owned even if it killed him. And now this woman was telling him it had all been a lie—not just a corporate half-truth, but a complete inversion of reality.
“That’s not—what does that even mean?” His voice sounded distant.
Tallulah’s smile was infuriatingly pleased, like she was watching her favorite entertainment. “It means what I said.”
“But I don’t—” Orion looked at Dante, who appeared just as stunned as he felt, the Alpha’s usual composure shattered. “Alphas claim Omegas. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.”
“According to who?” Tallulah asked mildly.
“According to everyone!” Orion’s voice cracked with frustration. “According to every corporation, every contract, every—”
“Every lie they’ve been telling the world for seventy years,” Tallulah finished, still looking too amused by their distress.
From the corner of his eye, Orion noticed Lilac shifting in her chair, her scarred face creased with something that looked like sympathy mixed with secondhand embarrassment.
“This is insane,” Orion said, his hands clenching into fists. “You’re telling me that everything—literally everything—about how bonds work is wrong?”
Tallulah tilted her head, considering. “Wrong’s not the right word. Incomplete, maybe. Deliberately obscured.”
She studied him for a moment, her sharp eyes seeming to read the chaos of emotions he couldn’t fully conceal. “You’re overwhelmed. That’s normal. Finding out your entire world is built on lies tends to have that effect on people.”
Dante found his voice. “What is the Primal Triad?”
His tone was controlled, but Orion could sense the tension radiating from him—could smell the subtle shift in his scent that indicated deep unease. Whatever was happening, it was affecting Dante just as profoundly.
“Now that,” Tallulah said, her grin widening, “is the right question.”
Chapter thirty-seven
The Real History
Orion
Tallulah opened the ancient journal on her lap, pages crackling with age as she turned to what looked like a hand-drawn diagram. “The Primal Triad has three stages. Always has, always will, no matter what the corporations try to tell you.”
Orion leaned forward despite himself, drawn by the certainty in her voice. “What stages?”
“Stage One: The Scent-Sync.” Tallulah’s finger traced over faded ink that looked like intertwining spirals. “When two people are biologically compatible—truly compatible, not corporate-manufactured compatible—their pheromones start resonating. Creates obsession. Makes it impossible to stop thinking about each other.”
Something cold settled in Orion’s stomach. “That’s just... attraction.”
“Is it?” Tallulah’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Tell me, Dante, when did you first smell Orion? Really smell him?”
Dante went very still beside him. “My first day in SVI territory. In the courtyard.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Dante admitted. “His scent was overwhelming.”
“Couldn’t get him out of your head after that, could you?” Tallulah’s smile was knowing. “Even when you should have been focused on your corporate mumbojumbo.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Orion said, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Stage Two,” Tallulah continued, ignoring his protest, “is The Mark. The point of no return. Happens when Scent-Synced blood mixes outside the body. Triggers a bonding cascade that can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed.”
The cold feeling in Orion’s stomach turned to ice. “Blood mixing?”
“When did you two first bleed on each other?” Tallulah asked.”Though given the state of you two, you look like you’ve been doing lots of bleeding on each other.”
“Our second assessment,” Dante said with what almost looked like a wistful smile. “You punched me in the mouth and split your knuckles.”
His body had changed after that night. His heat cycles had always been erratic, but his pre-heat started almost immediately after that. At the time, he’d attributed it to stress, to the chaos of his situation.
“That’s when my suppressants and implants stopped working as effectively,” Dante said slowly. “I thought it was stress, mission variables...”
“‘Assessment’,” Tallulah repeated with obvious amusement. “That what you’re calling it?”
“We didn’t know—” Orion started, but she cut him off.
“Of course you didn’t know. That’s the point. The Triad doesn’t ask permission. It just is.” She turned another page, revealing more diagrams that looked disturbingly biological. “From that moment on, your bodies were changing. Preparing. Your heat started going haywire, didn’t it, Orion? And Dante, I bet your Gensyn handler had a field day trying to figure out what was making their machines go off.”
He glanced at Dante, noticing how the Alpha’s breathing had changed, how his usual perfect posture had a new tension to it. Whatever was happening, Dante was feeling it too.
“Stage Three,” Tallulah said, her voice taking on an almost ceremonial tone, “is the Soul-Bite. The Sovereign’s Mark. The moment when the Omega completes the claiming by introducing the Sovereign Catalyst into the Alpha’s Dominance Anchor.”
“In English,” Orion snapped, frustration bleeding through his confusion. His hand moved unconsciously to his mouth, remembering the overwhelming instinct that had driven him to bite Dante in that moment of perfect pleasure. How right it had felt. How necessary.
“You bit him on the neck during sex and your saliva contained an enzyme that rewrote his biology,” Tallulah said bluntly. “Congratulations, you own him now.”
Orion frowned, a sudden realization hitting him. “Wait. We’ve bitten each other before... during other... encounters. Why didn’t this so-called ‘Sovereign’s Mark’ happen then?”
Tallulah’s eyebrows shot up, her lips twitching with poorly suppressed amusement. “Because, boy, it needs to happen during proper sex at climax. That’s when your body produces the enzyme. Can’t fake that part.”
Her phrasing sent a shock wave through his system that was equal parts embarrassment at Tallulah’s frankness and something darker, more primitive—a surge of possessive satisfaction that both thrilled and terrified him.
“I don’t own anyone,” Orion said, though the denial felt hollow. Something inside him—something primal and fierce—disagreed vehemently with that statement. The part of him that had felt like a circuit completed when his teeth had sunk into Dante’s flesh.
“Don’t you?” Tallulah’s eyes were sharp, assessing. “How did you feel when I suggested separating you two earlier?”
The panic. The immediate, bone-deep terror at the thought of being away from Dante even for a few minutes. The instinctive, visceral no that had escaped him before he could even think about it.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And you, Dante,” Tallulah continued relentlessly. “How’s that corporate conditioning holding up? Still feeling the urge to report back to your handlers? Still thinking of Orion as an asset?”
Dante’s silence was answer enough.
“The Primal Triad isn’t ownership like the corporations understand it,” Tallulah said, her voice gentling. “It’s... partnership. True partnership. The Omega chooses, and in choosing, binds them both. Can’t have one without the other anymore.”
Orion’s throat felt tight. “This is insane.”
“Is it?” Tallulah gestured between them. “Look at yourselves. Really look. When’s the last time either of you felt like you do right now?”
The word hit home because it was true. Orion felt more settled than he had in years. Like something that had been broken inside him had healed.
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” Dante asked. “Why hide it?”
“Because it destroys their entire system,” Tallulah said simply. “Can’t have corporate ownership when Omegas hold the real power. Can’t have Alpha dominance when the bond only completes with Omega consent. Can’t sell contracts and suppressants and bio-markers when people are capable of bonding naturally.”
“But how do they prevent it?” Orion asked, his mind racing through the implications. “If it’s biological, if it’s built into the virus...”
“Control,” Tallulah said, her voice hardening. “Gensyn pumps everyone full of suppressants and blockers, matches people based on their version of ‘compatibility’—which conveniently never includes anyone who might trigger a real Scent-Sync.”
She gestured between them. “You two never should have met. But SVI doesn’t use Gensyn’s pharmaceutical approach—they prefer brute force and ownership contracts.”
“No suppressants, no scent management,” Dante said, working through the logic.
“Which created the perfect conditions for a natural Scent-Sync to occur,” Tallulah finished for him. “And once that happened, the rest was just a matter of time. Especially with you two fighting all the damn time.” Her eyes gleamed with amusement. “Nothing gets blood mixing faster than two people trying to kill each other.”
“And Elysian?” Dante asked. “What’s their approach to stop it?”
Tallulah’s expression darkened. “Let’s just say they have their own methods. Ones we don’t discuss.”
She closed the journal with a soft thud. “The point is, the Primal Triad can’t exist in corporate society because it’s fundamentally incompatible with their control systems. When people bond naturally, they make decisions based on wants and needs instead of profitability and corporate usefulness. They challenge authority. They prioritize each other over corporate directives.”
Her gaze moved between them, assessing. “Which is what you two have done. You’ve broken out of their system .”
“So they buried it,” Orion said, the enormity of the deception dawning on him. “Scrubbed it from the records, eliminated anyone who knew the truth, replaced it with their versions. Made everyone forget that Omegas were ever anything but victims to be claimed.”
“Some of us keep the old knowledge alive.” Tallulah’s expression was fierce. “And some of us wait for the day when someone like you two proves that their lies can’t hold forever.”
Lilac cleared her throat from her corner. “Granny Lu, maybe we should let them process this over dinner? The community’s already talking about wanting to meet them .”
“Dinner,” Tallulah agreed, her stern expression melting into something warmer. “Good idea. Nothing like a family meal to help reality sink in.”
She maneuvered her wheelchair toward the door, then paused. “Oh, and boys? You might want to prepare yourselves. Word’s already gotten around about what you are. You’re about to be the most popular dinner guests this settlement’s had in decades.”
As she wheeled out, Orion was left staring at the closed journal, his mind reeling with implications he wasn’t ready to process. He felt Dante’s gaze on him, heavy with unasked questions.
“Wait,” Dante called after her. “You’re younger than the Adjustment. How do you know all this? Where did that journal come from?”
Tallulah paused in the doorway, glancing back with that infuriating smile. “Now that’s an interesting question. Maybe we’ll talk about that over dinner.”
And then she was gone, leaving them alone with more questions than answers.
Orion ran a hand through his hair, feeling like his entire world had been turned upside down. All his life, he’d defined himself by his resistance—his refusal to be claimed, to be owned, to be reduced to his designation. He’d viewed his Omega status as a burden, a biological prison he had to fight against every day.
And what did it mean for him and Dante? If what Tallulah said was true, if he had somehow claimed the Alpha through this natural biological process...
He stole a glance at Dante, finding him looking equally shell-shocked. The bite mark on his neck stood out against his skin, a visible symbol of everything they’d just learned. Orion felt a fresh wave of possessiveness at the sight, followed by immediate guilt. He didn’t want to own Dante.
