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“Yeah,” says Arrow reverently. “I feel you, baby.”

“Mmm,” says Knight, still licking. “Yeah, me too.”

“What do you mean, you feel him?” I say.

“It’s like, uh, he’s in me,” says Arrow. “All in me, not just stretching my ass, but in me all over.”

I don’t understand that, but they’re kissing now, Knight and Arrow, and Knight’s running his hands up and down Arrow’s chest, clutching him close as their mouths move against each other. I like the way they look when they kiss, I have to say. I let out a little sigh.

Striker’s back with a little tin. He settles in next to me and begins to gently apply it to my neck. He does this carefully,speaking to Knight. “And now you think you can control him? Arrow, can he control you?”

“I don’t know,” says Arrow.

“It’s not like I cancontrolhim,” says Knight. “It’s like, uh, I can help him. If he started going off the rails, I could pull him back.”

“That sounds like control,” says Striker.

“Well, whatever,” says Knight. “You can control us. You do that bark thing on us.”

Striker pauses, making a face at my neck. “Okay, good point.”

Knight goes back to licking the bite mark on Arrow’s neck, which actually looks like it’s healing. It’s making two big scar marks on his neck, raised bits of pink, shiny skin.

“But I can’t always,” Striker says, returning to rubbing ointment into my bruised neck. “Sometimes I can force things and other times I can’t. So, I don’t know if that means anything is really safe. Furthermore, when I think about blood, I…” He gives me a helpless look. “I just don’t trust myself around you, baby girl. I don’t trust any of us.”

calix

IT’S LATE WHENI get home from work, because I have to drive two hours from Cedar Falls to the compound upstate. I feel as if it was a wasted day, too. I didn’t really get any information that’s useful. Even though Tammy said that law enforcement might be there, I didn’t actually see anyone. Mostly, it was business as usual, weird as that sounds.

The omegas were really antsy and clingy, and I had to alpha them a lot to get them to calm down. I always feel weird about doing that, but it’s worse now, because I see Lotus in all of them.There is some person in there, trapped and cut off from their memories, and I wantbadlyto save all of them.

If they don’t have scent matches, does that mean their amnesia can’t be reversed? Are they permanently damaged? Isn’t there anything we can do for them?

When I get into the cabin where we’re staying, it’s dark outside. I come into the house and find them all in the nest room, asleep in a big pile. They’re all in various states of undress except Striker, and it looks like Knight has fallen asleep with his dick inside Arrow. Arrow may have fallen asleep inside Lotus, too, from the look of their bodies, but she’s rolled free of him and is curled up against Striker’s chest.

I’m hungry.

But I’m also exhausted. The nest has more pillows and quilts, and it looks inviting. It reminds me of my mother’s nest when I was a little boy. Sometimes, when I was too afraid to sleep in my bed, I’d come and climb into it, worming my way in between my dads’ bodies to find a nice comfortable spot to sleep in.

It seems just good. Safety. Home. Family.

I crawl in with them, unable to stop myself from rubbing my face against Lotus’s thigh, just wanting to get her scent on me.

Lotus stirs. She smiles at me, stretching. “Calix,” she says, so happy to see me.

Wow. My chest feels tight. I love this woman. I’m home. I smile up at her.

She sits up. “Need to go to the bathroom,” she says, climbing out of the nest, over the sprawled out limbs of our mates.

I flop back down into the nest, sighing.

I hear her out there. I hear the toilet flush. Then I hear her out in the kitchen, opening cabinets, looking in the refrigerator. I could stay here, but…

I get up, too, and I wander out there.

She’s a sight for sore eyes, totally nude, peering into the open refrigerator, her curves on display, her lovely shapely legs, her round ass. She straightens, shutting the door, and there are her breasts.

I sidle over to her and get a handful of one.