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“When did you get your bites?”

“I…” I don’t know how many days it’s been. I curl closer to Striker, and I want his protection, and I wonder if that’s the weak, human part of me again. I shove that away, thinking I’ll even get out of his lap. And then I remember I wanted that part of myself back.

“You need to tell me everything,” says Kyvelki. “That’s the only way we’ll be able to determine anything. What happened directly before the bites?”

I drag my upper teeth over my lower lip. “Well, I had two of them already, but then I…” I think back, trying to piece things together. “We were having an argument. I wanted the pack to allow me to face Selene in the tournament, and they wanted us to run.”

“You knew about the tournament.” Kyvelki smirks. She raises her voice. “This is your doing, Theodorus. Did you tell them about it?”

“I did,” comes Theodorus’s voice. He and the other alphas are not in the room, but they are listening from just outside the doorway.

“Theodorus has a crush on your alpha.” Kyvelki gestures at Knight.

“I absolutely do not,” says Theodorus, firm. “But it wasn’t an honorable move, Kyvelki. I didn’t think it was fair, to claim we were giving this pack sanctuary and then turn on them.”

Kyvelki considers that and sighs. “Perhaps. It was Penelope’s idea, really. I think she wishes to curry favor with our sister, Calix’s grandmother. She’s a beta, and she married into another pack a long time ago. Gave birth to an omega, Calix’s mother, though, which is where all her power lies, with her offspring. It’s not a great deal of power in that pack, but Penelope would like to exploit it. She’s the one who set up the match between Calix and Selene in the first place.”

I feel Calix react in the bond to that, and I reach out to him through our connection to comfort him. He didn’t know he was a bargaining chip. I understand it through him, now, as I feel his emotional reaction to it.

“It was political,” I say.

“Yes, Penelope and the Vasilissa of that pack do not get along. But then, omegas rarely get along.” Kyvelki shrugs again. “I don’t understand that. I’ve never allowed myself to succumb to that kind of petty power play. Anyway, if Penelope could bring Calix back into the fold, return a wayward alpha to the bond of a powerful omega, it would impress that Vasilissa. Perhaps I shouldn’t have given my tacit agreement to all of it. Had I scented you, I don’t think I would have. I would have realized it was a fool’s errand.”

“What do I scent like?” I don’t understand any of this.

“You scent like utter and complete command, my dear,” says Kyvelki. “I have never really submitted to a Vasillissa. I stay here with my sister because she permits my independence. But I would submit to you. I think I’d follow you anywhere. If you wished to lead us, all of the Polloi, into battle? I’d follow you. I’d die for you.”

I’m speechless. My mouth is dry. I just stare at her.

And that’s when my human part claws its way up from wherever it was that I have smothered it and tries to take control back. Internally, I feel a brief but violent struggle as my omega self vies with it. Inside me, I feel as if a storm rages for a few short, violent moments.

But as each side of me takes the other’s measure, they quickly cease their fighting. My human self settles in against my omega self. It is a truce, then. We are both now, equally.

I let out a gasping sort of breath, clutching at my chest.

My mates all reach in to put their hands on me. Striker finds his bite mark and passes his tongue roughly over it.

I groan.

Kyvelki laughs, bemused but somehow delighted. “Yes, I don’t quite know how to feel about that either. You must understand, when a woman trains as I did in the tradition ofbeing a teller, it often has, well, perhaps the opposite of the desired effect.”

“What do you mean?” I’m not even sure if I care, but I didn’t follow that at all.

“Tellers are—were—sort of the clergy of the Polloi,” says Kyvelki. “At one point, in the ancient past, a teller would lead a pack as a Vasilissa, but that hasn’t been done in hundreds of years. The Polloi have become more and more disillusioned with our beliefs, you see. The traditions promise us some distant triumph, that we will rise up and rule the entire world, but this triumph never seems to happen. After years and years of oppression and disappointment, no one wishes to hear what begins to seem like a pretty lie. Anyway, when I trained to be a teller, it was because I was a very devout girl, starry-eyed in my devotion to the Goddess. I wanted to be one of her holy emissaries. But the more that I learned, the more I myself became disillusioned with the stories. I began to see the stories as tools, not as holy messages from a deity. They were tools to give us the strength to keep going in the face of heartache, but they were not the means of breaking the chains of our suffering.”

I remember what Knight told us about her, and I think I understand what she means. “So, a teller should be the staunchest believer in a pack, but tellers tend to believe less strongly than everyone else?”

“Yes,” she says. “Too many stories, too many contradictions, too easy to see the seams of the stories, how they are simply meant to impart lessons, not to give any answers. I began immediately to see how our worship of the Goddess was simply a way to control us.” She smiles at me. “But you, omega, you make me want to believe again.”

“Just because of the way I scent?”

“And what you did to Penelope,” says Kyvelki. “When I spoke to her, the sheerterrorin that woman’s voice. She said that shetried to resist you, but that you crushed her will like a flower in your fist. She said she wanted, deep down inside, to simply please you. She said—”

“But she called the police,” breaks in Calix. Then he winces. “Apologies, kyra, for speaking without permission.”

“No insult is taken,” says Kyvelki, waving this away.

“Wait, alphas can’t talk unless they get permission?” I say, and I feel my anger filling the room like a powerful drug and everyone wilts against it, Kyvelki included.