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They’ve stopped for the night, and their pack has settled around a campfire, the small grove secured with tripwires and sharp-eyed lookouts. Dad has barely let them rest since their harrowing escape from Terminus, driving their pack forward like cattle, snarling at anyone who lagged behind. Carl got scruffed twice during the final stretch of their journey, and his feet ache in his mismatched sneakers, but the pillar of smoke in the sky from the compound's smouldering remains is finally far behind them. He curls up on the sleeping pad Dad scavenged for them from a sporting goods store on the road to Terminus, cradling his sister in his arms, stroking his fingers through her wispy hair. The pack scent she'd carried back at the prison is gone after their long separation, but she's already starting to catch traces of Carl's scent and seems content with it.
He rubs his cheek against hers and blows out a stuttering breath into the collar of her woollen shirt. He’d really thought he and Dad had lost her, the weight of it hanging over their heads for weeks, the heaviest thing Carl has ever tried to shoulder, but here she is, cradled in his arms, a little lighter than she used to be, but Tyreese has taken good care of her.
Carl looks up at the rustle of dry leaves, but it’s just Dad, his posture relaxed for the first time in days as he settles down on the sleeping pad next to Carl.
“You should get some sleep,” Dad says, offering to take Judith from his arms. “We’re moving at first light.”
Carl shakes his head. “I wanna hold her,” he says, hugging Judith against his chest.
“Alright, but it’s still your bedtime.” Dad combs his fingers through Carl’s oily hair and settles against his back to shield him from the cold, pressing his nose against his nape.
He's barely let Carl out of his sight since that night on the dark road, the bloody scrapes on Carl's cheek only half-healed. He doesn't want to think about it—what was almost done to him—but he knows it broke something in his father, the alpha in him somehow wilder. More savage and unforgiving. Possessive, too, making Carl feel safe and cared for.
It’s still dark when something wakes him up. He can sense Daryl and Abraham nearby, walking the perimeter and watching over their sleeping pack. Dad is asleep behind his back, one arm draped over Carl’s waist, his fingers curled around Judith’s woollen sock. His sister squirms in his arms and lets out a sleepy snuffle against Carl’s chest. The sound clears the cobwebs of sleep from his brain, drawing his attention to his shirt, and the fact that it’s—soaking wet?
Carl claws at the front of his shirt, trying to peel the damp fabric off his chest, a trail of something wet leaking down his ribs.
Is he bleeding? Has he been bitten?
“Dad,” Carl whimpers, his scent souring with panic. “Dad.”
His father senses his distress even through sleep, jolting awake with a loud snort. “Carl? What’s wrong?” he hisses, hovering over Carl, one hand reaching for the handle of his ax.
Carl rolls onto his back and blinks up at him, his fingers hovering over his chest.
“I-I think I’m bleeding.”
“What?” Dad sits up and urges Carl to relax his hold on Judith, settling her on the sleeping pad. He presses his palm to Carl’s chest, and if he’s alarmed, he doesn’t let it show on his face or in his scent.
“Lift up your shirt. Let me take a look.”
Carl does as he’s told, pulling his shirt up to his armpits, his chin trembling. “Is it bad?” he whispers, too scared to look.
Dad studies Carl’s bare chest in the fading firelight. There’s a brief flash of shock on his face, but it settles into something unreadable as he presses the pads of his fingers to Carl’s tender nipple. He glances up at their sleeping pack—and brings his fingers to his mouth for a taste.
Carl wrinkles his nose. “Dad? What are you—”
His father spits into the shrubbery, his gaze shifting to Judith who slumbers between them.
“You’re not bleeding, honey,” Dad says.
Carl frowns. Did he dream the whole thing? He lowers his gaze to his chest and stares at his nipples, stiff and pointy from the chilly night air. When he presses his hand to his left pec, something squirts out of his nipple, wetting his knuckles.
“What is this stuff?”
His dad clears his throat, smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “It’s milk.”
“What?” Carl yanks his shirt down, suddenly self-conscious. He hasn’t even finished presenting and, “I—I don’t even have any pups.”
Dad scratches his chin, his gaze shifting from Carl to Judith and back to his soaked shirt. “I reckon our reunion with your sister must’ve triggered something in your body. Some instinct to care for her going a little haywire.”
“I’m making milk for Judith?” Carl gasps, feeling a little queasy.
Isn’t it weird? To be full of milk for his father’s pup and his own sibling.
Abraham walks past them, twigs snapping in half under his heavy combat boots, his musty alpha scent drifting through the air in his wake. Dad waits for him to vanish into the shadows before he lifts Judith into his arms, his expression still carefully guarded.
“Do you wanna try feeding her?”
“Seriously?” Carl squirms, glancing at their sleeping pack mates, his shoulders pulling up to his ears. “Isn’t it… wrong?”
Dad settles behind Carl’s back, shielding him from curious eyes. “Nothing wrong with feeding your hungry sister,” he whispers, urging Carl to lift his shirt and expose his small tits, barely there but leaking, a bead of milk pushing out of his nipple. “Come on, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Carl holds out his arms, feeling awkward and too small as Dad settles Judith against his chest. Her eyes flutter open at the sweet scent of milk, and she blinks up at Carl, smacking her tiny mouth.
“Alright, I think she knows what you’re offering,” Dad says, cradling her head gently in his big hand, lifting it toward Carl’s nipple. “Just relax and let her latch on. She’ll know what to do.”
“Um. Okay?”
Carl’s shoulders jump when he feels his sister mouth at his breast, and he lets out a startled giggle because it almost tickles when she parts her small lips, her breath ghosting over his areola.
“That’s it,” Dad murmurs, guiding Carl’s nipple into her mouth with the pad of his finger, supporting her head as she begins to nurse from him. “Good.”
A shiver passes through Carl’s spine, the skin on his forearms prickling with goose flesh. There’s a sense of release, but the rhythmic pull of Judith’s mouth on his nipple feels weird, and he can’t shake the feeling that what he’s doing—feeding his own sister under his father’s watchful eye—is somehow fundamentally wrong.
He thinks about Mrs. Clarke's class about pack structures and reproductive ethics, one of the last classes he'd attended before the outbreak. He hadn't paid much attention, more interested in the comic he'd hidden between the pages of his text book, but the memory of the class is suddenly vivid in his mind.
"All right," Mrs. Clarke said, tapping the whiteboard with her marker. "This part is important, and it shows up on every standardized exam, so I need everyone to pay attention."
The whole class sat up a little straighter, and even Tommy Brooks in the back stopped tossing pieces of eraser at his friends.
"Now, beyond basic genetics, which we covered last week, healthy pack structures and bonding is heavily influenced by something called neurological imprinting." Mrs. Clarke wrote the term on the board in large letters and gave the class a moment to memorize it. “It happens primarily during childhood and adolescence. I know it's not an easy word, but what it means is that your brain is essentially being trained to recognize who belongs in your family pack. Your mom and dad, brothers and sisters, even cousins. All of them get ruled out as potential mates."
"How?" one of the girls in the front asked.
"It mainly happens through familial scent recognition, and it's enforced by the healthy boundaries set by your parents. It's like a built-in biological safeguard."
"What if someone doesn't have a nose?" Tommy asked, earning himself a burst of quiet snickering.
"I promise you, your body doesn’t rely on just one sense to figure out who counts as family," Mrs. Clarke says. "Your hormones and emotional bonding also play a part."
"But what if it doesn't work?" the girl in the front asked.
“That can happen, under extreme circumstances," Mrs. Clarke said, her voice taking a more serious tone. "When the imprinting process is disrupted through isolation or abnormal bonding environments where pack roles and boundaries aren't clear," she said, writing everything down on the whiteboard, “growing up in high-stress environments or households that are isolated from a wider community and lack potential mating partners for the alphas and the omegas in the pack can interfere with how imprinting pathways form."
Carl hadn't presented yet, but the school nurse had given Mom and Dad her prediction about his most likely designation after his last checkup, and the chances of him becoming an alpha like his father were looking pretty slim.
"What happens to an omega without the right—" Carl squinted at the whiteboard, "—imprinting pathways?"
“In omegas, it can lead to confusion about their role in the pack and triggers an unhealthy dependency on the alpha they have imprinted on and—other behavioral and emotional issues that you don't need to know about at your age," Mrs. Clarke said, letting her eyes travel through the classroom. "That is why every modern pack health council classifies bonding within a family pack as a high-risk reproductive pathology." She wrote the term on the whiteboard and glanced at the clock. "Alright. I want you to read pages 214 to 220 for homework. There will be a quiz."
Carl still doesn't know what the word pathology means and he's pretty sure he'd bombed Mrs. Clarke's pop quiz.
"Dad? Are you sure I should be doing this?"
His father pets the crown of Carl’s head, his scent so soothing that Carl feels a little light-headed as he breathes it in, like he's taken a big dose of cold medicine. “You're doing good, Carl. Providing for your sister, giving her what she needs.”
And maybe Dad is right. It’s a harsh world they live in, every day a struggle for food and shelter. At least now they won’t have to worry about running out of formula.
Carl doesn’t have a lot to offer yet, and Judith drains him with a few hungry suckles.
“It’s alright. You’ll start makin’ more once we get a proper routine going,” Dad says, like it’s perfectly natural for his fourteen-year-old son to start nursing his sister; like Judith is Carl's baby.
Dad unzips the duffel bag where they keep their change of clothes and pulls out a clean shirt for Carl, shielding him with his jacket as Carl changes out of his milk-soaked shirt.
And that’s it. His body has been pushed to do something it’s not ready for, but Dad doesn’t give him a heart-to-heart the way Mom probably would have, and Carl figures it must not be such a big deal after all, settling back onto their sleeping pad, Judith cradled between their bodies, Dad’s hand on Carl’s hip, a little family of three.
They get a routine going.
Dad pulls Carl aside at the end of each day when their pack settles down for the night, watching over him as Carl cradles his sister in his lanky arms and lets her nurse from him. People take note of their nightly disappearances, lifting their eyes from their chores as Dad pulls Carl aside without a word. No one brings it up or hollers after them, giving them their privacy, but Carl feels self-conscious about it, the pit of shame in his belly refusing to go away every time Dad leads him away with Judith on his hip and his hand on Carl’s nape.
They're in the sacristy of Father Gabriel's church tonight, and it's nice to finally be indoors. Even Carl's milk seems to flow easier with no threat of walkers behind his back. Dad has built him a small nest from the blankets they found in the church donation pile, and he sits in it cross-legged, the warm candle light casting long shadows on the wood-paneled walls.
“That’s it, Carl, you’re doin’ good,” Dad says, his breath a little sour from the sacramental wine that was passed around earlier. He reaches out to feel Carl’s left breast while Judith's emptying the right one, thumbing at the puffy nipple until it lets down a bead of milk. “Look at that. Still some left in here.”
Carl feels his cheeks burn at the observation and he tilts his head to hide his face under the rim of his hat. There’s nothing inherently inappropriate about the way Dad touches him, but Carl’s overwhelmed body is sensitive there and turns the caress into something it’s not—can’t be—and his scent blooms with a confused note of arousal, saturating the air in the small room as his father helps him turn Judith around in his arms.
Dad’s nostrils flare wide open with a sharp inhale, but he doesn’t comment on Carl’s honey-sweet scent, resting his hand on his half-developed mating gland, smiling down at Judith.
“She’ll go to bed with a full belly tonight.”
His sister is well-fed and content for the first time in months, and Dad says Carl is doing a good job, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. He tells himself it would be cruel to deprive his sister of real milk and force her to go back to formula, but the more he does it, the more milk he’s starting to yield, which makes it hard to stop.
Even the rough couple of weeks they spend wandering down the roads of rural Georgia doesn't put an end to it. Dad feeds every scrap of food they find to Carl while his own cheeks grow gaunt under his feral beard, leading their pack through trials and tribulations until their path veers in an unexpected direction with the arrival of a man called Aaron.
Carl is sitting in the back of the RV, peering at the Washington Monument through the window as he waits for Judith to fall asleep on the narrow bunk. He always wanted to see the capital, but he can barely concentrate on the view because his chest aches like there’s a brick on his sternum.
It’s barely midday and Judith’s next feeding is still hours away, but Carl doesn’t know if he can wait that long. He turns his eyes to the front of the RV, to Abraham behind the wheel and Dad in the passenger seat, the two of them speaking in hushed whispers. There’s no privacy in the camper with half of their pack crammed into it, the other half following in a second car not far behind, and Carl knows he can’t just ask everyone to stop so he can disappear into the ditch to empty his tits.
Dad seems to sense his distress, turning around in his seat, meeting Carl’s eyes across the narrow corridor. He says something to Abraham and gives his seat to Rosita, joining Carl in the tiny sleeping nook.
“Everything okay back here? I see you got Judith to fall asleep,” Dad says, brushing his knuckles against Judith’s plump cheek.
“Yeah, she went out like a light.” Carl shoves his hands into his pockets, pulling his shoulders into an awkward hunch. “I just…”
It’s too embarrassing to even say it—that he’s already too full and needs some relief, might leak right through his shirt if he doesn’t get it—but he’s never been good at keeping things from his father.
Dad pulls the screen door behind his back closed for some privacy and takes a seat on the bed. “What’s wrong, Carl? Tell me.”
Carl glances at the closed door, can see Daryl and Carol through the gaps in the wooden slats, hears the murmur of conversations on the other side of the door. There’s no real privacy, but he curls his fingers around the hem of his shirt and pulls it up to his arm pits.
“Dad, I think I’m too—”
“Full,” Dad says, trailing his gaze over Carl’s milk-laden chest. “Oh, honey.”
Carl lets out a sharp whine when Dad presses his fingers to the curve of his breast, the skin around his areola tingling from the touch.
“Shh. Gotta be quiet,” Dad hushes, glancing at the door as he takes Carl’s nipple between the V of his fingers, his pupils like two inky pits even in the bright midday light.
They both watch as Carl wets his knuckles with a burst of milk, the scent of it filling the air like a cloying puff of perfume.
“The others are gonna smell it,” Carl hisses, his eyes welling up as he tries to pull his shirt down. “Dad. Everyone’s gonna know what we do. That I—”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Dad murmurs.
He settles his fingers against his jawline and finds his scent gland under the thick scruff of his beard, a few good rubs bringing out his alpha scent, the musk in it overpowering Carl’s milky scent.
But it doesn’t ease the ache in his too-full chest.
“Should we try feeding her?” Carl asks, reaching for Judith on the bed.
His father grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away. “Let’s not wake her.” He brings his hand to his lips and licks the beads of milk on his fingers into his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment—like he's savoring the taste. “I’ll help you, honey.”
Carl lets Dad pull him up from the bed, wants the help—craves it—but his belly does a self-conscious flip as his father pushes the screen door aside, exposing him to their pack.
“Dad…” Carl squirms, hesitating at the door step, but his father takes a firm hold of his nape and walks him out into the hallway, ushering him toward the small bathroom.
Daryl lifts his gaze from the arrow he’s making and locks eyes with Dad. His father holds Daryl’s gaze, and Carl senses some wordless communication in the eye contact, a challenge, maybe, one that Carl is too young to understand, but Daryl ignores it, turning his attention back on his arrow as Dad closes the bathroom door.
It’s too cramped for two people, but his father maneuvers their bodies until Carl stands in front of the small sink, his flushed face staring back from the mirror. Dad looms behind him, a whole head taller than Carl, his hands big and proprietary on his hips.
“Alright. Take your shirt off.”
Carl bites his lip, his sister’s absence in the room making the whole thing feel inherently forbidden. There’s a word for it, Carl heard it in Sunday school once, but he’s struggling to remember it with his father’s expectant gaze reflected back at him in the mirror.
"We don't wanna get you all messy," Dad points out, tugging on the collar of Carl's shirt.
Carl does as he’s told, pulling his shirt over his head. He takes a moment to fold it as he wonders how exactly his father is going to help him with Judy asleep in the other room.
“Bend over.”
“Huh?”
Carl turns to look at Dad over his shoulder, confused. His father settles his palm between the bony wings of Carl’s shoulder blades and gives him a gentle push until Carl is leaning over the sink, his palms flat against the vinyl-panelled wall. The ache in his chest flares up and his right breast lets down almost immediately, leaking onto the white porcelain.
“Dad, what are you—”
Carl gasps as Dad takes a firm hold of both of his breasts, still too small to fill his palms, but full enough to squirt a white sprinkle of milk as his dad pulls and squeezes, pulls and squeezes, building up a steady rhythm.
Carl stares at his reflection in the mirror, can barely look at himself, the unshed tears in his eyes rolling down his cheeks, red and blotchy with gut-deep humiliation. Because he's getting milked and it’s on the verge of too much, every pull making him whimper, Dad’s fingers pressing into the flushed peaks of his tits, pinching them, his eyes dark and glazed in the reflection.
“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart,” Dad murmurs, nosing at Carl’s tear-stained cheek. “We’ll get it all out.”
Carl stares at the swirl of milk as it disappears into the drain, the omega in him lamenting its loss, still beyond his control and easily overwhelmed. “It’s all going to waste,” he whines. “Dad, we’re wasting it.”
“Mmh,” his father hums, tilting his head to watch another squirt of milk go down the drain. And he’s so close now, his chest rising and falling against the ridge of Carl’s spine, the hard buckle of his belt digging into the small of Carl’s back. “We don’t want that."
Carl shakes his head, a half-swallowed hiccup bubbling up his throat. He watches Dad slip his wet fingers into his mouth in the reflection in the mirror, can’t look away even as his belly lurches with a sudden, shocking woosh of arousal.
Dad takes hold of Carl’s hips and turns him around until they’re standing face to face in the cramped space, and it’s one thing for Carl to let his baby sister nurse from him because it’s about survival and keeping her fed, but there’s no such need his father requires him to fulfill—and Carl wishes it was enough to make him want to stop, but it's not, a part of him that he doesn't fully understand eager to give in.
He lets Dad crowd him against the sink, his chin pressed against his sternum as he watches his whole breast disappear into Dad's mouth, the discomfort and the humiliation of being milked into the sink vanishing, his father’s chapped lips gentle on his nipple as he takes a long pull of milk, harder and greedier than Judith, grunting at the taste, his throat bobbing under his thick beard as he drinks and swallows.
Carl lets out a soft mew, the budding omega in him pleased by the knowledge that his milk is no longer going down the drain. He feels a wet trickle between his legs, the air in the room growing even sweeter with—
Dad lets out a sharp snort, his breath puffing out of his nostrils against Carl’s sternum, and Carl tries to back away, flustered and embarrassed, but there’s nowhere to go, the edge of the sink digging into his ass, Dad’s mouth still latched onto his nipple.
“Dad, I’m—I’m sorry,” Carl gasps, mortified.
He doesn’t have to remember any specific word from Sunday school to know that the scent of his arousal isn’t something his own father is ever supposed to smell
“It’s okay,” Dad soothes, pulling off Carl’s breast, cupping his face. “Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.” There's a dazed slur to his voice like he’s had too many beers, the grizzled hairs under his bottom lip wet with Carl’s milk. “It’s natural.”
“It is?” Carl asks, rubbing his thighs together.
He never got the birds and the bees talk from his parents, whatever questions he had about Judy when she was still in Mom’s belly pushed aside every time he tried to ask them, the need to survive taking priority over Carl's curiousity.
“It is.” Dad grabs a towel from the small rack next to the shower cubicle and presses it to Carl’s chest, patting him dry. “Perfectly natural,” he repeats, pressing a kiss to Carl’s developing mating gland.
Their new house in Alexandria is ridiculously big, all the empty rooms giving Carl a queasy, anxious feeling in his belly as he explores each floor. He's barely been parted from his dad since their reunion in the quarry camp, going to sleep with his scent in his nose every single night, never more than an arm's length away. His father scent marks the whole house, but Carl still feels lonely and restless whenever he can't see him, wishes he could leash himself to Dad, the thought so weird that he doesn't quite know what to do with it.
He tries to settle into one of the bedrooms a few days after their arrival, one that had clearly belonged to another teenage boy, the posters on the walls an echo from bygone days, but it turns out his father has other ideas about their sleeping arrangements.
“You sure you wanna stay in here?” Dad asks, stepping into Carl’s potential new room, sticking his thumbs into his belt loops as he looks around.
“You want me to keep sleeping on the living room floor?” Carl sputters, puzzled by Dad’s question; the rest of their pack has already relocated to their new homes down the street, leaving Carl to share the entire big house with his father and his sister.
“‘Course not,” Dad huffs, "Come on," he says, nodding toward the door, motioning for Carl to follow him down the hall. He ushers Carl into the master bedroom with a gentle hand on his nape and points at the bed. “Whaddya say you sleep here with me?” he asks. “It’s a big bed.”
“Really?” Carl circles the bed, that queasy feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong, resurfacing in the pit of his belly. “Dad, I’m not a little kid anymore. Isn’t it… kinda weird?”
Dad walks to Judith’s crib next to the changing table and taps his finger against the wooden duckling on the mobile that hangs above it. “Your sister sleeps here. It’s... convenient,” he says, killing whatever argument still sits on the tip of Carl’s tongue. “It makes sense for you to be nearby if she needs to feed.” Dad cups Carl’s cheek and pulls him so close that the tip of his freckled nose is pressed into the scent gland peeking out under the sweat-stained collar of his button-up, his alpha scent reassuring and so thick that Carl feels his mouth go slack as he breathes it in.
“Right, honey?”
Carl nods, the relief of getting to share his dad's bed easing the lingering sense of anxiety.
"Right, Dad."
Alexandria changes them.
Changes Dad.
His guard never comes down—hasn’t since Terminus—but he embraces his newly appointed position as the constable of their small and sheltered community, shedding his rough and unkempt appearance from their time in the wilds, wearing the authority of the badge like second skin, fully in his element.
It doesn’t take long for the gentle suburbanites to realize his father is in charge, what little control Deanna had amassed easily taken. There’s no real struggle for it. Ron’s scumbag father tries, coming at Dad with a drunken challenge, and Carl watches his submission with the rest of Alexandria as Dad turns Pete’s challenge into a public brawl and a show of dominance, the red veil of blood that drips down his face by the end of it as terrifying as it is soothing, his father’s authority set in stone.
Once it's all over and Pete has slunk away to lick his wounds, their neighbors subdued and shaken, Carl follows Dad home and up the stairs, pacing around their bedroom as he cleans himself in the ensuite bathroom.
“I didn’t scare you, did I?” Dad asks, stepping out with a towel around his neck, his wet hair curling against his nape. There’s something almost vulnerable in his expression as he tilts his head, waiting for Carl to answer.
Carl gives a little sniff, wrinkling his nose at the coppery smell bleeding through the scent of soap. There’s still blood under Dad's nails from his brawl with Pete, his knuckles pink and raw, the shiner on his cheekbone already swelling.
“Carl? Did I scare you?” Dad asks again.
Carl closes the distance between them and cups his father’s bruised cheek, the skin hot like a sun-warmed garden stone under his palm. “You could never scare me, Dad.” He takes his hat off his head and stands up on his toes to press his lips to Dad’s purpling bruise. “He deserved it.”
And from that day on, his father is in charge. No one challenges him after his show of dominance, not even their own pack, most of them agreeing with Dad's iron-fisted rule, intimately familiar with the unforgiving world beyond the gates.
It's been almost two years since Mom died, and everyone knows it's not healthy for an alpha in his prime to live without a mate, the threat of rut-sickness even more dangerous in the new world. Dad needs a mate—deserves one for being so good and strong for his pack—and Carl sees the way Ron's mom begins to look at Dad, but his father doesn't seem interested in her pretty smiles, only has eyes for Carl, coming home to him after a day of patrolling and overseeing the improvements to their new home, his eyes soft as he listens to Carl tell him about the day he had with Judith over the dinner Carl has cooked for him.
Alexandria changes Carl, too.
The sudden abundance of food and safety and all the comforts of the old world coax his body out of its stunted state, and he shoots up a full five inches over the first couple of months they spend inside the safezone’s walls.
And it’s not the only part of him that grows.
His chest fills out as they stop rationing every meal, the fronts of his shirts pulled taut, his nipples showing through the fabric even when he isn’t cold, sore and half-chewed. Because he doesn’t just feed his sister now. His father takes his share every night after Judith has been put to bed. Because Carl needs the relief, his chest too full from the constant feedings, but the more his father takes—much more than Judith—the more Carl fills up, the whole thing turned upside down with Carl now having a need only his dad can fulfill.
Carl starts to get pointed, lingering looks whenever he takes Judith out on her afternoon walks, pushing her stroller down the street. People whisper to each other as they watch them from their yards, the confusion and the occasional look of disgust Carl catches on their faces making him turn the stroller around and rush home.
“Is she really your sister?” Ron asks one day in the attic of their house, looking at Carl over the comic in his hands.
“Huh?”
“Judith. Are you really his brother or…”
“Or what?” Carl snaps, his cheeks prickling with a cherry red blush.
Ron flicks his eyes down to the front of Carl’s raglan shirt, and the brief look is enough to make Carl drop his comic and leave the room, the implication of it humiliating.
He brings it up to his father that night as he settles Judith into her crib.
“Dad?”
“Mm?”
“I think people are saying… I mean, I get the feeling that people are kinda confused about Judith.”
Dad looks up from the paperback he’s been reading in bed since their arrival, watching Carl over the rim of an ill-fitting pair of reading glasses. “What’s so confusing about your sister?”
Carl pulls Judith’s blanket up to her chin and circles around the bed to seat himself by his father’s side, his shoulders curled inward.
“They—kinda think she’s mine,” he says under his breath.
Dad folds his reading glasses and puts his book down on the nightstand, settling his hand on Carl’s nape. “Of course she’s yours.”
Carl shakes his head, dragging his socked feet against the plush carpet. “Yeah, but they think I—” he glances down at his chest, tries to be subtle about it, but his father notices, reading Carl like an open book.
"What do they think, Carl?" Dad asks, pushing Carl's overgrown bangs off his eyes.
“They think she really is mine."
His father pulls him onto the bed and against his flank, threading his fingers through Carl's hair.
“You were there when she was born. Helped her out of the womb,” Dad murmurs, with an intensity that makes Carl unable to look away from his face. “You feed her and take care of her. Ain’t no one else in our pack who can do that for her. You're a natural, honey.”
Carl soaks in his father’s words, his belly tender with something soft and eager, a tentative purr working its way up his throat.
Dad smiles at the awkward sound and presses his lips to Carl’s forehead. “She’s your baby, Carl.”
Carl bites his lip, tilting his head to meet Dad’s eyes, doesn't quite know what makes him say it, his belly full of tiny butterflies as he whispers, “Our baby.”
His father lets out a raspy rumble that resonates straight from his alpha cords, a sound Carl hasn’t heard since Mom and Dad shared the cot in their tent that first night after their reunion. He listened to his parents that night, their scents mingling in the tent, earthy musk and sweet dew, the breathless gasps and rough grunts reaching his sleepy brain and making him think his parents were play-wrestling on their cot. The thought was silly even to his twelve-year-old self, but it’s even sillier now that he’s old enough to know his father was fucking his mother, and he can almost conjure up the scent memory of Dad’s arousal, the heady musk of it, realizes he’s smelling it fresh in his nose as his father pulls his shirt up and over his head, settling Carl on his back, lowering his mouth to his breast.
“That’s right,” Dad murmurs, the possessive, raspy note in his voice reaching some budding part of Carl’s omega hindbrain. “Our baby.”
Dad sucks on Carl’s nipple and plump areola, takes his breast into his mouth, and it’s different tonight, their conversation still sending ripples through the air. In its wake arrives something new—a tectonic shift that Carl doesn’t fully grasp or understand, but he lets his father push his thighs apart, feels that familiar wet rush of slick between his cheeks as Dad settles between his legs and rolls his hips into Carl's groin, the movement slow and full of intent.
He does it again. And again, grinding into the fold of Carl’s soft inner thigh, and there’s something different about the way he starts to mouth at Carl’s breasts. Dad isn’t just helping himself to the excess milk his sister didn’t drink. He’s kissing and caressing Carl’s nipples and the bony valley between them, the sensation of pleasure it conjures zipping down Carl’s spine and pooling in his belly, making his little omega cock stiffen in his boxers.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Carl pants, the sweet scent of his arousal exposing him to his father’s nose in a way he can’t hide or deny with a white lie. “I can’t help it...”
“You don’t have to apologize, honey,” Dad murmurs, looking up from the spit-wet peaks of Carl’s tits. He rolls them around, settling Carl onto his lap, stroking his palms against his thighs. “I told you, it’s natural.”
It’s not. Carl knows it's not. He didn't get beyond sixth grade, but he isn’t naive enough to think that what they’re doing, how wet he is for his own dad is in any way normal. But what about their lives is normal anymore? Their whole existence is one extreme circumstance, but his father keeps him safe, makes him feel—so good, the coil of embarrassment in his belly unraveling as Dad thrusts up into the cleft of Carl's ass, the weight and girth of his hard cock so visceral that Carl startles a little, swaying in Dad’s lap.
“It’s okay,” Dad soothes, settling his hands on Carl’s hips, stroking his thumbs along his trembling belly. “You’re okay. Aren’t you, honey?”
Carl nods, a little unsure, his toes curling against the soles of his feet. He arches his back and gives a tentative push, pressing his ass against Dad’s cock, feels it force his cheeks apart, the flared head pressing into his tailbone through the loose pair of boxer shorts his father has worn to bed.
“You wanna make your daddy feel good tonight?” Dad asks, his hands gentle on Carl's hips. He thrusts up again, dragging his cock against Carl’s little hole through his underwear.
Carl doesn’t really know what he’s agreeing to, but his dad has taken care of him from the moment he was born, has kept him safe in a world that belongs to the dead and the deprived, has killed men for Carl, forced them to submit, guided their pack to safety from the brink of starvation.
The thought of denying his father doesn’t even cross his mind.
Carl threads his fingers through the wiry hairs on Dad’s belly, resting his palms against the firm lines of his abs. The scent of his arousal blooms honey-sweet in their noses when his father pulls his underwear down, settling the waistband under his ass cheeks.
He presses his fingers to Carl’s tailbone and drags them down along his cleft in a gentle, indulgent caress, pausing when he reaches the tight furl of Carl’s hole. He settles his middle finger against it and gives a shallow, coaxing push that has Carl whining and leaking for him.
“Oh, sweetheart, look at that.” Dad brings his hand between them, holding it up to show Carl the wet slick that glistens on the tip of his finger, the scent of it thick and cloying.
Carl lets out a mortified squeak as he watches Dad bring his hand to his mouth. “Dad, don’t.”
His father grins at him, shoving his finger past his lips, his cheeks hollowing out as he savors the taste of Carl’s slick.
“That’s so gross,” Carl groans, sticking his tongue out.
“It ain’t gross,” Dad says, still grinning, winding his fingers around a tuft of hair at Carl’s nape. "You're the sweetest thing I've tasted."
He pulls Carl down like a scruffed pup and gives him his first kiss, the taste of his own depravity lingering on his father’s tongue as he licks into Carl’s mouth. He tries to match Dad's pace, but it's too overwhelming, makes him feel like he's being devoured, and he doesn’t even notice when Dad’s hand disappears from his nape. There’s a rustle of fabric, and Carl jumps as his father settles his cock between his cheeks, completely bare now, no layer of cotton between them as he rubs himself against the wet pucker of Carl's hole.
“Feel so good, honey,” Dad grunts, thrusting up from the bed, mouthing at Carl's soft jawline. “You get so wet for your dad, don’t you? Just for your dad.”
Carl nods, drooling into the kiss, the sloppy smack of their lips that follows embarrassing. It’s all happening so fast—his first kiss, Dad’s hands on him, as ravenous as his mouth, the thick girth of his cock like a brand against Carl’s untouched hole.
Dad doesn’t try to put it inside, can tell Carl’s body isn’t ready yet, still stuck in the early stages of his presentation, but the flared head catches on the furl of Carl’s hole on every other thrust, and it makes him feel like he’s drowning and soaring all at once, his body trembling and overwhelmed as he lets Dad use him, the omega in him pleased to please.
Dad fondles his small breast, thumbing at the gumdrop of Carl’s nipple, plumped up from Dad’s mouth. "Got such pretty tits. Grew them just for me."
For Judith, Carl's brain wants to correct, but he's distracted by Dad's hand as he trails it lower, his fingers splayed over the shallow dip of Carl’s belly button.
“When you’re older,” Dad whispers, tapping the shaft of his cock against Carl's hole, “we can give Judith a little brother or a sister.”
Carl blinks at him, his mouth slack, a string of drool rolling down his bottom lip as his pleasure-hazy brain works out the meaning of his father’s words. He shifts his gaze down to his belly and stares at Dad’s hand on it.
We can give Judith a little brother or a sister
He and Dad.
Making a baby.
Carl cries out, his hole twitching against the fat tip of his father’s cock, the intimate implication of his words finally reaching what’s left of the rational part of his mind. It’s so wrong—Carl knows it is, doesn’t need to hear about the birds and the bees to understand that making a baby with your own father isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. But his dad only wants the best for Carl, praises him for taking good care of his sister, tells him he was made for it.
Carl stares at his belly, pictures it big and round with a baby inside, the fantasy of it coaxing out a small squirt of come from his cock, wetting the front of his underwear.
Dad lowers his hand to the waistband of Carl’s briefs and slips it inside, palming his messy little cock. “You want it?" He pulls his hand out of Carl’s underwear and pats his belly, leaving a watery stain of come on the downy hairs under his navel. "Want your dad to put a pup in here?”
Carl nods, leaking against Dad’s cock, wishes his body was ready for it, still too stunted for the picture his father is painting.
“We’ll get you there. You just gotta finish growing for me.” Dad swipes his fingers against Carl's hole and brings them into his mouth for another taste, dragging his tongue against his canines. "You'll be fertile soon, I can taste it," he whispers, the groove between his eyebrows pinching deeper as he fits his cockhead against Carl’s pucker and pushes on his cheeks, closing them around his shaft. He fucks into the soft clutch of his ass and shoots his load right onto Carl's messy hole, managing to get a few drops past his rim. "We'll train you to take my cock, and when you're ready, you can have my whole load, every mornin', every night, until it takes."
Dad pulls Carl down into his arms, cradling his head against his chest, and Carl listens to the rapid thump-thump-thump of his heart, the rhythm of it matching the drumming under his own ribs.
“Everything okay, honey?”
“Uh-huh,” Carl sighs, nosing at the scent gland on the sweaty hollow between his father’s clavicles. “I’m okay, Dad.”
His head is still spinning from the pleasure of his orgasm, the first one he’s had beyond the ones he sometimes has when he’s dreaming, but he already wants more. Doesn’t care what Ron and the rest of their stupid neighbors think. Wants to push Judith’s stroller down the street with another pup in his belly and his father’s claim on his neck, and no one will be foolish enough to say a darn thing about it. Not after Pete. After Terminus. The foul men on the dark road who tried to lay their claim to Carl and steal him away from his father.
Dad presses a kiss to Carl’s forehead, his fingers brushing against the tender spot where his shoulder meets the curve of his neck. It’s a little swollen, but the patch of skin under Dad’s fingers is still smooth, not yet ready for a bite.
There are no weddings or vows to God in the world they live in, but Carl has always belonged to his father, and one day, he will be ready for it. For Dad’s claim on his neck and their pup in his belly.
***
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