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And then I brush that aside and refuse to think about that anymore.

The weirdest thing that happens is when Kyvelki and Theodorus show up at the facility together, and they’re both freaked out by all the things in the secular world that they’re notused to, like sliding doors and all the televisions and cell phone notifications jingling into the air. They both look like startled rabbits.

They want to talk to Lotus about a revolution.

That’s what I think it is, anyway.

Kyvelki says we’ve gotten here so easily because of the will of the Goddess. “She has her eye on you, and you are under her protection.”

I disagree. Kyvelki has a little bit of a point, I suppose. We were chased by law enforcement and we did, you know, kill people, but we haven’t been brought up on murder charges. We were chased by Cedar Falls, who wanted to kill us all, but we’re not dead, and we’re in fact being helped by the facility. So, this could look like some kind of divine providence, I suppose.

But when you take into account the laundry list of terrible things that have happened to us all this far…

Well, if the Goddess likes us, I’d hate to see how she treats people she doesn’t like, let’s just say that.

I don’t believe in the Goddess anyway.

Kyvelki says that we are meant to lead our people out of hiding and into the light of a new day. “You are special. You are a special pack,” she says. “And you, Lotus, you are like no omega on earth.”

I wonder, though.

I wonder about the omegas downstairs. If I could get them integrated, too, like Lotus, would they be just as powerful? I wonder if Lotus really is special, or if that intensity in her scent and her command is a side effect of drugs.

“You just don’t want anything to be supernatural,” says Lotus when I say this to her. “I get it. You don’t want the Polloi to be right about anything. They weren’t good to you, and you want to reject them.”

“No,” I say, offended by that. “The supernatural is ridiculous.”

“Well, there’s something with us, though, Calix, with the way everything has gone with us,” she says.

“Biology,” I say. “Instinct. Pheromones. Hormones.”

“The bites, though?” she says with a shrug. “You can’t deny there’s something about omegas and alphas that’s just… magic.”

I snort.

Lotus wants a nest.

She’s wanted a nest for a long time, just like the omegas in the facility want a nest. It’s a deep longing in all of them, something that seems to drive almost all of their behaviors. The nest-making consumes the omegas now that they’ve been allowed to engage in nest-making behaviors.

Lotus tries to nest.

She’s tried to nest everywhere we’ve been. She tried to make a nest in the punishment house. She tried to take over Penelope’s nest and claim it as hers. Here, in the suite at the facility, she does her best. But despite her best efforts to turn our suite into a nest, it’s never going to be home, and we all know that.

So, eventually, we leave.

I won’t say we leave just because Lotus wants a nest.

But, well, we adore her, and she’s our omega, and she needs it, and we are all very motivated to make her happy.

Leaving is fraught with all sorts of issues, most of which come from Coltrain. He’s been surprisingly accommodating to us, but I realize that it’s because we provide an existential threat to his entire way of existence. Coltrain is married with three kids, the oldest of which is twenty and the youngest of which is fourteen. He and his wife have been together a long time, and he’s currently at the phase of parenthood where everything’s crazy expensive. College. Weddings. New apartments. Cars.

He craves stability.

He does not want to go to jail or be excoriated in the court of public opinion, which could lead to the corporation that owns Cedar Falls firing him. He wants everything to stay the way it is. I get that he was easily manipulated by Acker for this same reason. Acker threatened to explode his life—tell his wife he was unfaithful, destroy his marriage, end everything. He was willing to allow her to do unprecedented unethical things just because he wanted to protect that life.

So, I’m certain that he’ll do pretty much anything to keep us from destroying him.

The thing is, he’s paranoid about us leaving. He kept Acker close, and he wants to keep us close. We’re a threat, and as long as he has us under his roof, he’s accommodating. Letting us go scares him, however, and it’s obvious that it does.