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If I had been of a bloodline close to the Vasilissa, if my pack had been important, then I would have either not had a job at all or I would have taken time off for the job. But if I’d been way down the line, near the bottom, then my pack wouldn’t have mattered. I can see there being pressure, even in the wake of bonding an omega, to say that alphas of that caliber should leave the nest and go make money for the pack.

I was taught that taking money from the outside world was noble. Sucking on that massive organism like a parasite, bleeding it dry. Anything we could do to benefit ourselves, whether it was taking jobs from them or charging them outrageous prices for our homemade jam, we did it.

But if things had been different, I would never have left her.

Of course, if things had been different, she would have bites from all of us, and we all would have been in that nest with her, naked, and we would have spent the day knotting her.

So, leaving her at all this morning, it wasn’t easy, but I did it.

I actually had an idea that what I was going to do today was to look into getting some drugs that could knock Acker out. Because if we’re worried about her getting free, the best thing we could do would be to sedate her.

I’ve been stealing rut-suppression drugs from Cedar Falls since I first got this job. I originally got the job as a janitor to have access to the places in the facility where those kinds of drugs were kept. Due to my alpha abilities meaning I was good at soothing omegas, I ended up working with them.

Anyway, I can get to the drugs. That’s not a problem.

So, I had plans of doing that today, and that was a big reason why I went in to work.

I don’t know why I’m keeping this job exactly, only that it’s a means to income—which none of us have—and that I feel we’re tied to Cedar Falls in some way. Whatever that way is, it hasn’t come to closure yet.

None of us are really in a position to make big decisions right now. Things are in flux, and we’re just hanging on, really.

The second reason the day has been trying has been the new bond.

I had some idea what this would be like, to have bitten an omega. People say that bonds mean you’re aware of each other, and that you feel each other, that you feel as if you’re sort of inside each other.

But I’d also heard that a scent-match bond was a lot more intense, and I had braced for that.

Now, I don’t know if this is more intense, but I know it’s inconsistent. Sometimes, I feel nearly at one with Lotus, as if we are not separate people at all but just entirely connected. Other times, I don’t really feel her at all. When we sync up, though, it tends to be, uh, jarring.

It was jarring when she was just worried about Knight’s whereabouts. That cut into me, and it made me panic. Did I need to go back? Was something wrong? Had Knight been kidnapped or hurt or worse? I knew he had mob connections. Maybe they had come for him, and—

But then, no, it all wiped out, because Arrow knew he was fine.

And she was just gone.

The effect of that? To be trying to do your job and overtaken by someone else’s panic, to feel the panic as your own, to add to the panic as it permeates you…

And then have it turn off?

Well, it makes me feel insane.

And that was before the sex part started, which, uh… well, then.

Having your omega’s second-hand orgasm wash through you while you are pretending that you’re not wicked turned on and trying to do your job? It’s, um, yeah, not entirely comfortable.

Clearly, this can’t go on. There’s got to be some way we can protect ourselves from unwanted bond leakage—for lack of a better term.

However, the good thing about this leakage is that I get another idea, which is that I can look for some kind of drug to give Acker that can completely take her out as a problem. If we could give her amnesia—if we could give her the same kind of brain damage she’s given the alphas and omegas in the facility?

Well, I can’t think of a better solution to this entire problem.

Of course, by the time I get into the room where the drugs are all kept, it’s late, and I’m tired, and I realize I don’t entirely know how to do that.

So, the way that my mates were damaged was an accident. No one knows why some people react badly to the drugs andother people don’t, or else, obviously, they would have fixed it so that it wouldn’t happen anymore.

I sit with that thought for a moment before I have another thought.

Would they have fixed it?