Page 24

But everything feels hopeless right now.

knight

CALIX’S ALARM GOESoff early and he gets up to go in to work at Cedar Falls. I get up, too, because I smell coffee brewing.

Calix points at me when I come into the kitchen. “Not taking you to work with me today, not like last time, okay?”

I smile sheepishly. “Yeah, I wasn’t going to ask.”

He’s doctoring up his coffee, and I see there’s some in the pot, so I pour it into a mug for myself. “Hey, I thought you said it was a thing we could do to each other, bite each other. I distinctly remember you saying it was about something in our saliva that would make the bites scar.”

“You’re talking about you and Arrow,” he says.

“Yeah, you said something about the scent.”

“It scents… I’ve never scented anything like that,” he says. “When I said that we could bite each other, I was talking about something cosmetic. Sometimes alphas bite betas or other alphas or whatever, but it’s just for show. It’s a mark on their body, that’s it. There’s more to it with you and Arrow, isn’t there? It’s a bond.”

I nod. “It is, yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know how that’s possible,” he says. “As far as I know, that’s not something alphas can do to each other.”

“But maybe it’s because of the scent match?”

“Maybe,” he says. “And maybe the weird teeth shit is because of that, too.” He pauses, thinking about something, then lifts a finger. “Hey, you know who might know something about this?”

“I obviously don’t,” I say.

“Okay, so, one thing about this pack that’s weird is that some of Penelope’s sisters are still here, omega sisters. She has two, who could have gone off and started their own packs. They could have been Vasilissas in their own right. They were subservient to their mother, but once she was gone, there was no reason to accept Penelope as their ruler. But they did. One of them is an elderly woman named Kyvelki. She’s an omega, and she’s a little eccentric—okay, a lot eccentric. She’s a teller.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a cleric, essentially. A revered and religious position. She knows a lot about Polloi lore. She trained, when she was a girl, in the Polloi tradition, and she had to memorize a lot of the ancient tales and wisdom. Anyway, if anyone knows about scent matches, it would be her.”

“So, okay,” I say. “I could go talk to her?”

“No, definitely don’t,” I say. “That would be very disrespectful. You can’t just go visit an omega, if you’re an alpha. Maybe Lotus could go, but we need to get Penelope’s permission first, probably.”

“Why can’t I go visit her?”

“You’re an alpha,” he says. “She’s an omega. Not only that, you’re an unclaimed alpha. She might ask you to fuck her or something. She’s so highly ranked, she could do that.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“What’s that look on your face?” he says. “You can’t go fuck this omega. I mean, she’s old, anyway, like really old.”

“So, how likely is it she actually does want sex?” I say. “I could flirt with her.”

“How would Lotus feel about that?”

“Well, considering that Lotus is currently fucking all of us, I would think—”

“You know how jealousy goes outside of the pack,” he says. “You saw how she got about Arrow’s wife.”

That’s true.

“Besides, you’re just not getting this,” he says. “You could go to that omega, and she could be so offended that a lowly alpha like yourself would dare to approach her that she could have you executed.”

I shift on my feet, furrowing my brow. “What kind of place is this, Calix?”