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“Were you fucking her?” says Calix.

Coltrain groans.

“I think that’s a yes,” speaks up Lotus softly. “Is that why you let her do what she did to my mates? To the men I love? Is that why? Because you were pussy whipped?”

Coltrain scratches the back of his head. “Okay, first of all, it was a long time ago, and it was, um, not like you’re thinking, exactly. It was only once, and then she just brought it up all the time. Like, ‘Digger, you remember when you first hired me, and I was twenty-four and you were thirty-eight and you slept with me.’ Like that. I mean, it doesn’t matter that she got me drunk or that she initiated and I’m not even accusing her of doing it in order to manipulate me. I don’t know if that’s why it happened. I don’t know. But she sure as fuck took advantage of that. And she didn’t…” He looks at me and then at Arrow and then settles on Knight. “A lot of women wouldn’t have taken so enthusiastically to sexually manipulating subjects who were experiencing developmental damage. She sure as fuck didn’t mind doing what she did to you.”

“So, it was all Acker’s fault,” says Calix softly, his voice a little sarcastic.

“No,” says Coltrain. “I did sleep with her, didn’t I? And when she started going off the rails, when she kept getting more and more unorthodox, I let her manipulate me. But I don’t think it would have held up if she’d tried to accuse me. She was consenting. It was once. I think I could have proved she was using it against me. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want my wife to find out. And anyway, it’s not as if Acker started the program.”

“Who started the program?” says Knight. “You?”

“It was my idea, and I lobbied to be in charge of it,” says Coltrain. “And for years, before Acker arrived, I tried everything I could think of to get results, and I got nothing. She, however, got the alphas to be much more intelligent and much more focused and useful than anything I’d done. So, anyway, what brought back your ability to speak and to understand words?”

“We could understand you for a long time,” I say.

“Yeah, we suspected that,” says Coltrain. “But we don’t know how she did it.”

“An injection,” says Arrow.

“When?” says Coltrain.

“We still don’t know how long we were in there,” I say.

“I could have told you that,” says Calix. “Sorry. I don’t know how we never talked about it. But I had access to your files.”

“Anyway,” says Knight, “we sure as fuck didn’t know how much time had passed in Cedar Falls. It’s not like you gave us calendars.”

“Fine, fine,” says Coltrain. “But you couldn’t talk until what?”

“Until her,” I say.

Coltrain fixes his gaze on Lotus. “Your omega.”

“And I started to understand words right after I scented Calix,” say Lotus.

Coltrain looks at Calix. “Because this is some mystical scent magic? That’s what you’re trying to pedal to me? Scent magic fixed your brains?”

“Sort of,” says Calix. “I have this theory that whatever your drugs do, it’s similar to a bite frenzy, which is when people go feral. There are times when alphas and omegas go feral in the Polloi, and it’s almost always solved by the hierarchy of the pack, like someone higher ranked than you brings you back together. Our scent match sorted them, pulled them back from the feral edge. But not everyone has a scent match. They’re rare. So, we need something else for the other alphas and omegas in the basement of Cedar Falls.”

Coltrain is quiet. Then he turns away, looking off into the distance. “Feral,” he murmurs. “Huh.”

lotus

I REMEMBER THElast time I was in one of these suites. Well, I didn’t have a suite. I had just a room when I checked into Cedar Falls for my heat when I was twenty-one years old. This time, we have a suite, with a huge, huge bed that will fit all of us, I think. It’s meant for someone who’s paid for five or six caregivers.

I wonder about that, about what happened to me in that room where I was in before. I went into heat, and I came here and paid for some random people to have sex with me, and I was given an injection so that I wouldn’t remember any of it.

It wasn’t until after my heat faded that they realized something was wrong with me, because the heat was done, but I was still behaving erratically.

Coltrain personally brings us in here and tries to do what he can to make us comfortable, but everyone is cold with him and eventually, he leaves.

Then, we are alone, and I don’t know what to do.

I feel it through the bond, all of them, the way they are processing what I did to them after I killed Acker, the way I forced them to fuck me and each other for days, and I know they can feel my shame and disgust through the bond. That wasn’t me. That was… Vasilissa Lotus. Except she’s in me, I suppose. I would have sworn up and down that there was nothing like that in me.

I used them.