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So we wait it out.

He bites the omega.

Which… I keep saying, as we’re all watching the cameras, that this is going to happen. They are goddess-damned feral, after all, pure instinct. No way does go any other way.

But, uh, they start talking immediately.

Within four days, they have their memories back and all of the brain damage is completely reverse. But they also don’t know each other and they’re bonded, and it’s very messy. I’m not really sure if either of them were nominally, erm, gay before this happened either, so that’s… yeah.

We’re not really sure what to do.

We can pair up the omegas and alphas in the facility, and try this happening again, but we’re taking a risk with the omega’s lives and we’re making big decisions for these people in terms of what happens after they have bites. Additionally, this new alpha-omega pair are very angry with Cedar Falls, as well they should be. Coltrain, however, wants to minimize the fallout from any scrutiny over this. He wants to keep it all a big secret, so he’s refusing to allow any contact with the alpha’s or the omega’s families.

And while this is really great that this happened, I feel like we still don’t have any answers. We don’t know why the drugs that are given at Cedar Falls sometimes make omegas and alphas feral. We don’t know what the effect of this prolonged ferality is, either.

To me, it doesn’t seem like this omega has a potent and powerful scent the way that Lotus does, but I don’t know if Lotus’s scent is related to our scent match. One thing that is true, though, is that the alpha has teeth like ours, the big fang-like alpha incisors. So, it stands to reason that the effects may be very similar.

I want to bring Kyvelki in to scent the new omega. Coltrain refuses to allow this.

There’s a week full of stress and tension and a lot of confusion about what I should do and whether we should go public, even though we’ve signed non-disclosures with Cedar Falls and its parent corporation. We meet with a lawyer to find out what the consequences would be if we break that legal document.

And then, while we’re all debating that, the omega and the alpha escape the facility, go home, contact the press, and it just blows up.

Cedar Falls’ corporate owners sweep in real fast, offer a bunch of law settlements, shut down the entire facility, and they come in and want to talk to me. After a few conversations, they put me in charge.

I float an idea that we pair up the alphas and omegas in heat while having guards standing by with stun guns to stop the alphas from doing any permanent damage to the omegas and that we muzzle them so that they can’t bite.

That’s what we do.

The brain damage is reversed and they aren’t bonded, and immediately when they come back to themselves, the corporation offers them huge cash settlements in exchange for never talking about it and not pressing any charges. Every single one of them takes it, even the original mated pair who blew the whistle on everything to begin with.

I wait for some sign that these alphas are going to be “triggered” like my mates were. But they aren’t. I have to admit, the last time my mates were triggered, it was before Lotus’s first heat. She stopped it, reined them back in, but it hasn’t really happened again since her heat. Maybe the heat restores some kind of pack hierarchy that limits the ferality? I hope that’s the case.

Coltrain himself gets “reassigned.” He keeps his pension and his big house and keeps sending his kids to expensive privatecolleges. I think he maybe gets a very nasty scolding from the corporation, but… basically, it’s a slap on the wrist, no real consequences.

So, it feels like, two minutes after it blows up, it just blows over.

Nothing’s changed.

Drugs like the ones given out at Cedar Falls are being given out at facilities all over the country, and the wave of current regulatory bodies in government is tending towards less regulation, not more. No one’s going to step in and stop this very profitable business that works by selling omegas and alphas a little story that they can be just like betas.

After all, who wants to be a freak?

I can’t blame them.

One night, I curl up with Lotus in the living room in our apartment, which is still being paid for by the corporation that owns Cedar Falls, after all, and I lay my head in her lap, and I say, “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t an alpha.”

She brushes her soft fingers through my hair and says, “I’m glad you’re an alpha.”

I shut my eyes.

“What did the job offer look like?” she says.

My eyes are still closed. “They want to close down Cedar Falls as a facility for profit and turn it into nothing more than a research facility. They say it’ll all be volunteers. They say they want very scientific, double-blind studies with all sorts of controls and they want me to stay on in an advisory capacity. Basically, it’ll be my job to make sure that everything they do is ethical. I’ll be the person who makes sure the test subjects are protected and that we don’t violate their rights.”

“You don’t have to take it,” she says. “We don’t have to keep relying on them for money. We can get, you know, real jobs.”

I laugh softly. “Oh, come on, you and Arrow are right in the thick of doing all that activism work, going out and doing speaking gigs to tell betas about how to accept and accommodate alphas and omegas. It’s good that you guys are doing that. And it’s good to use the money from Cedar Falls to do good.”