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“Biting frenzy,” Theodorus says with conviction. “Kyvelki thought it was that. Your omega is more powerful than anyone could have imagined. She’s the most dominant thing anyone’s ever felt. Penelope’s frightened, but Kyvelki’s fascinated. Come with me. We can help.”

We can’t trust them. None of them.

And anyway, it’s not up to me. It’s up to Lotus. She’s the omega. She decides.

“You can take me,” says Theodorus. “Tell your omega—well, I imagine she can hear me—that she can hold onto me as hostage. Kyvelki will not risk me.”

I don’t know if I believe that. Kyvelki didn’t seem overly concerned with her mates, and knowing everything I know about the way things work here, I don’t think I trust that.

Lotus feels that through the bond, which goes strange and powerful, and I feel it trying to pull me back down.

Panicked, I stagger at the doorway, trying to hold onto this thread of myself, but the urge to surrender is overwhelming.

“If you stay here, they will take you back to that facility,” says Theodorus. “We’re wasting time.”

Cedar Falls.

The bond is filled with our shared images of that place, its cold institutional reality.

We all recoil from that.

Lotus stands up and everyone stands with her. She comes forward, and we begin pulling the chairs away from the door.

When we open it, Theodorus is standing there in one of his old-man cardigans. “Well, then.” He holds out his hands. “Want to secure me?”

Lotus’s voice is cold. “We will follow you, but we trust no promises made by the omegas here.”

Theodorus considers that, shrugs, and nods as if whatever she said was utterly reasonable. “We’ll go out the back door,” he says.

lotus

MY PACK ANDI go with this alpha, Theodorus, winding through a path in the woods as he looks around to make sure no one is following us. He tells us that the extended pack has gathered in a few houses towards the other side of the property, that everyone is frightened of the police presence and of our pack. I am apparently the most terrifying thing that has ever happened here.

We arrive at a house where we are greeted at the front door by two aging alphas. An older woman, Kyvelki, I presume, is sitting in an easy chair in her living room. Her scent is strong and intense, an omega scent. It hits me differently than any other omega scent has. There is a settled regalness to it, unlike Penelope’s scent, which was strong, but somehow erratic.

“Leave your men out in the kitchen,” says Kyvelki.

“No,” I say. “They stay.”

She lifts her chin and surveys me for a long moment before nodding her assent. She gestures for me to sit down on another easy chair.

Instead, I sit down on the couch, and I use the bond to pull my alphas down with me. The couch isn’t quit big enough for all five of us. I sit on Striker’s lap. He curves a hand around my hip, holding me against him.

I want to calm my mates, but I am not calm, and I don’t know how to do it. Their fear and worry is infecting me, however, and—in turn—I am aggravating them with my own fear and worry.

I am beginning to think that I must give the human part of me—theweakpart of me—some avenue for control, because I am out of my depth. I don’t know what to do. However, I’m not certain how to even find that part of myself. It seems choked, pushed all the way deep down into me somewhere.

“I wonder about your bloodline,” murmurs Kyvelki. “It’s amazing that an omega with so much raw power would have been born into the secular world. Do your parents have designations?”

“No,” I say. Does this matter?

She puts her hands together, palm-to-palm, and presses her joined forefingers to her lips. She is quiet for some time before she speaks. “You wouldn’t know about biting frenzies, I suppose. They are rare, but with this, the way your whole pack scents, it should have been obvious to me that it would happen.” She tilts her head at Knight. “I should have noticed when you came, I suppose, but I got distracted by the teeth.”

“What’s a biting frenzy?” I say.

“About what it sounds,” she says. “In times gone past, whenever one would happen, it was considered a sign of the Goddess’s favor, but I suppose anything that is otherwise inconvenient, frightening, and often dangerous must be described in some positive way or else it’s too much to bear.” She shrugs. “We’re lucky that it was contained. If you had been in a house other than the punishment house, the whole pack might have caught it. And how long has it been going on?”

“I don’t know,” I say.