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I manage to convince him that if he uses Cedar Falls resources to bankroll our lives out there, it’ll be just as good as us being here. I float it like we should be paid as employees, because we will be coming back to the facility practically daily to continue doing work on the research here.

My mates hate it.

They don’t want to be bought and paid for by Coltrain. They hate Coltrain and they don’t trust him.

But eventually, they all go for it, mostly because they aren’t really sure what they would do for money otherwise. It’s not as if they can go back to the jobs they had before. Arrow can’t work for the police. Striker can’t be a priest. Knight can’t be a mafia hitman. Lotus never finished her schooling, so she doesn’t have a profession to even go back to. They would all have to start over from zero.

And that’s to say nothing of the fact that the legalities of bringing all of them back from the dead have proved confusing.

The truth is, if Arrow’s ex-wife Carla hadn’t known he was alive and started contacting Cedar Falls asking questions, Coltrain would have been quite happy not to tell anyone’s family anything. But that forced his hand, and that’s why the others have contact with their families.

As for undoing death certificates?

That brings exactly the kind of attention Coltrain doesn’t want.

And he’d rather keep us here, because he can withhold us from our families and keep control over them in that way. With us being out, he thinks we’ll scheme and take him down.

We won’t.

Or, at least, I won’t, and I’ll do my best to convince the others as well. Because I want to help the omegas who are locked up here. The alphas too.

And I don’t even blame Coltrain for this, not exactly. I don’t think he’s innocent in it, that’s for sure.

But when we killed Dr. Acker, it didn’t change much.

It wasn’t satisfying, and it made Lotus feral, and she feels guilty about it all now.

Vengeance just isn’t want it’s cracked up to be.

I manage to convince everyone that it’s going to be fine if we go out and rent this apartment in New Canaan, just twenty minutes from the Cedar Falls facility, and if we all go there, and if Lotus can make herself a nice nest, that we’re all going to figure out how to be, you know,together. A pack.

So, we go.

After three months, we go.

lotus

AT FIRST, NESTINGis a full-time job.

I have a budget. We are being paid salaries, and we sit down and figure out how we should divide and conquer the money. We decide how we will pay for rent and groceries and all those sorts of things. But there are five of us, so we have enough money for everything, very easily.

Anyway, I get a nesting budget, and it’s kind of huge. I think this is because my alphas are too indulgent when it comes to me, but I also feel like it’s necessary, like this nest is really important, and like I’ve been waiting for far too long to make it.

I don’t spend crazy amounts of money. I do go and buy a lot of essentials, like blankets and fabric, but I make a lot of things, too. I sew pillows out of plush fabrics, and I stuff them full of shredded memory foam and down fillers and all sorts of good and soft things.

At first, it’s all I do.

I try to be organized. I try to look at everything, make a big plan, and then follow the plan. But what happens is that—while I’m in the middle of finding a certain kind of fabric—I get an idea for something else, which distracts me, and I end up trying to focus on that for a while.

So, for a while, I have about seven different projects at various stages, and I’m trying to finish something, anything, just to feel like I’ve accomplished one thing. It takes a while, and I begin to think that my method isn’t a method at all, just concentrated chaos.

It’s a full-time job.

But then, it starts to come together, almost like magic, but maybe because some part of me knew what I was doing all along, even when I didn’t realize what I was doing. I begin to see why it was I stopped in the middle of one project to work on a different one, because having that one done makes the first one much easier.

When the nest is done, it’s a perfect room of soft lights, soft cushions, soft pillows, many blankets, warmth and goodness. It’s everything I ever wanted.

And then, with the nest done, I promptly go back into heat.