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This heat is different than the last one, when my mates were all so ragged. None of us are sore and exhausted this time around. All of us are eager and ready.

It breaks in four hours.

Then we all lie there in the nest, sweaty and naked, and Knight says we can stretch that out next time if we want, and everyone laughs.

I ask Calix about it later, the next day, I think, when he and I are doing laundry from the nest, shoving the washing machine full of blankets, and he says that in the Polloi, a heat breaking quickly is taken to mean it’s likely the omega is pregnant.

“Oh,” I say, feeling myself shrink inside.

He sighs and pulls me against him to kiss the top of my head. “I haven’t forgotten about it, you know. I did talk to Coltrain.”

I wriggle out of his grasp.

“It’s more complicated, you know,” he says. “Not only do all the omegas down there have their tubes tied surgically, but they’re on birth control to stop their periods, just for the sake of convenience. No one wants women with the brain power of toddlers to have to change tampons.”

“Oh,” I say, wondering why I hadn’t thought of this before. “I haven’t had a period this whole time.”

“Right,” he says. “It’s an injection. It’ll wear off in about six months. Then your cycle should start again. Now, why you’re going into heat at all, however…” He shrugs.

“I shouldn’t?”

“It’s all connected,” he says. “Heat means ovulation. Ovulation should mean menstruation eventually.”

“But with my tubes tied—”

“That just means the ovulated egg can’t get into your uterus,” he says.

“Oh, right, I guess I know that,” I mutter. “Right. The tubes being tied, it doesn’t stop my reproductory cycle, it just stops me getting pregnant.”

He nods. “Tammy and I talked it over, and we think you’re having anovoulatory heats.”

“You talked about this with Tammy?” I put my hands on my hips.

“Sorry?” He cringes.

I sigh. “Okay, what does that mean?”

“It means, like, you’re going into heat, but you’re not ovulating,” he says.

I bite my bottom lip.

“Okay, so a beta ovulates once a month, and she doesn’t go into heat,” he says, “but for a few days of the month, when she’s fertile, there are changes in her body, similar to an omega’s heat. She’ll be more receptive to sex. She’ll have changes in cervical mucus—like slick but not as intense. She’ll even have a difference in smell. It’s all mammalian stuff, right? We’re not a separate species than betas, we’re just… heightened.”

I nod. “Okay, okay. This is interesting. I guess. But what if something’s really wrong with me that I’m not having periods?”

“Yeah, well, Coltrain doesn’t want you going to another doctor, someone who isn’t in house at Cedar Falls,” he says. “And I have to admit that with your being an omega, the truth is that the regular medical establishment is kind of idiotic about us. The tendency for modern medicine is to suppress anything omega or alpha.”

“Try to make us like betas,” I say.

“Yes.”

“What about the Polloi?” I say. “What do women do in the Polloi if they aren’t having their periods?”

He snorts. “Stupid things. Most of them won’t hurt you, like drinking herbal teas and doing ritual dances under the full moon. Some of them carry the risk of infection, like yogurt douches and shit. It’s quack folkloric medicine, Lotus.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it true that a lot of midwives have knowledge of things that modern medicine doesn’t know about because men are afraid of women’s cycles and things like that?”

“No,” he says. “People who are proponents of that kind of claptrap try to say that the medical profession is corrupt, but the medical profession is based on evidence and trials and science, and this stuff is all just hogwash.”