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“What are you saying?”

“Coltrain. Now,” I say. “We cooperate, no more fighting, no more issues. But we want to speak only to him.”

Jones hesitates, pointing the gun at me.

“Get on your walkie-talkie there,” I say, nodding at it.

“I can’t, not and cover you at the same time,” she says. “We’ll just wait for backup, and when they get up here, you can do whatever talking you want.”

So, we stand there, her pointing her gun at me, for moments that drag on and on.

Until more police officers are rushing up the stairs and coming in through the doorway. They come for me, but I yell at them that unless they want the entire compound mobilized against them, they need to leave me in here to talk to Coltrain and only Coltrain.

The threat of Lotus controlling everyone is pretty empty, because I don’t think she can do it. I think to influence people, they have to be close enough to scent her. And anyway, I don’t know if she’d even direct a bunch of people to hurt cops, especially not if it meant they were going to get shot to death.

But Kyvelki did say she’d die for Lotus.

So, it’s possible, anyway.

I reiterate it, claiming that my omega is too powerful not to be taken seriously. “Tell them how powerful she is, Penelope,” I shout.

Penelope, for her part, cringes and says we should be given whatever we want.

Coltrain pushes into the room, looking at me with wide eyes. He’s wearing a suit, but his tie is loosened and his hair looks mussed. He takes me in. “You.”

“Me,” I say.

“You’re the one who let her out,” he says.

“Just putting that together, huh?” I say.

“You’re an alpha,” he says.

I shrug.

“We’re not negotiating with you,” he growls.

“I think you are,” I say. “I think you have to.”

“I definitely do not,” he says. “And I don’t care if you threaten to mind-control the entire population of the Polloi into a suicide attack. I will never—”

“No,” I say, “that’s not my bargaining chip with you.”

“No?” he says.

“No.” I shake my head. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Coltrain. You’re going to bring us back to Cedar Falls, but we’re not going to be locked up downstairs in those rooms that are prison rooms. You’re going to give us a suite like the ones used for heats and ruts and paying customers. And then we’re all going to work together to figure out what the hell it is your drugs have done to supercharge our alpha and omega sides.”

“Wait.” He swallows. “What?”

“Yeah,” I say. “And then we’re going to get some people looking into a cure. A real cure, even if it’s not profitable. We’re going to fix every single alpha and omega in that place.”

“That’s a lot of demands,” says Coltrain. “It’d probably be easier to just shoot you all, don’t you think? I saw what you bastards did to Debbie.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “So, you guyswerefucking.”

Coltrain glares at me. “You said you had a bargaining chip. If I do all of that, what will you do in return?”

“In return?” I say with a big smile. “We will not go to the press.” Honestly, we should have probably thought of this before. It seems obvious now, but I guess none of us really know any investigative reporters.