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Elijah and Ezra were in a huge bed with Remy between them, watching the Fast and Furious movie made in Tokyo.

“Remy says if we behave, we might be allowed to drive?” Elijah asked as soon as they entered.

“You have to exhibit an ability to make good choices before it’s a possibility. If that’s a goal, I can map out what has to happen to make it a reality,” Dev told him. He looked at Remy and tilted his head towards the door, and Remy climbed out from between the two cats and left the room.

Genie stepped out of her shoes and turned the light on. “I need to check your wounds and listen to your hearts,” she said, and she walked to the in-room computer and pulled up the chart that showed Elijah’s episodes. Unless he’d had another while Dev had been gone, it’d been around twelve hours since he had one, and he was likely finished. Still, he’d need to go twenty-four hours without any spasms or puking before they’d let him go to cat and back.

Ezra’s bite marks were no longer bandaged because they’d scabbed over. However, Elijah’s were still an open wound. She changed out the dressing and retaped it without comment, andthen pulled a stethoscope from her bag and listened to both of their hearts, front and back.

Dev crawled into the bed between them, and Ezra said, “We want the girl in the middle.”

“You get me in the middle. She isn’t ready to have to deal with you both at the same time. She can spend some time with one of you, and then the other.

“Ezra got her last time, so I get her first this time. I should also get her longer.”

“You had her last time as well — she kept you alive,” Dev told Elijah. “Not my fault you were unconscious for most of it. She can start with you, but there will be equal time.”

“And you will behave,” Genie told Elijah. “Keep your hands to the polite places or I won’t stay close enough you can reach me.”

Dev had asked her not to talk to them about the possibilities of there being more than cuddles yet, and it seemed she was good at following orders. Better than the twins, at any rate.

“How do you tell them apart?” Genie asked Dev, standing at the foot of the bed, looking back and forth at them.

“I’m afraid if I explain while they can hear me, they’ll change something so it no longer works,” Dev told her. They were identical, down to the last freckle. He’d checked, and their paperwork said the same. Their former masters had put their names on their steel collars, locked on in a way they couldn’t be removed without cutting them off and welding them back together. The collars had been sized so they could stay on through achange. However, Dev and Brooke were trying to turn the young men into freepersons, and a collar would be counterproductive to that aim.

Dev could tell the difference in the way their cats felt, however. Elijah’s was just a little more feral than Ezra’s. Hetastedmore wild, less tame. Taste wasn’t the right word, but Devhad somewhat of a working Jacobson’s organ even in human form, so it would have to do. Also, now that he could feel them through the bond created when he’d bitten them, he could feel even more of them. Their essence. Their soul, perhaps.

“Our bracelets are different,” Elijah said. “I have the heavy-duty ones with these tiny needles that go a few millimeters into the skin, and Ezra has two of the original kind we wore.”

Genie climbed into the bed and snuggled into Elijah, and they watched the movie. Genie and Dev, who’d seen it before, remarked on the plots, actors, stunts, props, and stand-out lines. The running commentary from the twins was funny, but also poignant, because it underscored the life experiences the young men hadn’t had.

Genie had noted that they were emotionally stunted, and she wasn’t wrong. From what he could tell from their paperwork, there’d been no way to foster them out to other cat shifters, so they’d lived their life in a lock-up area of the Concilio’s fortress. Their childhood hadn’t been evencloseto normal, living amongst ancient vampires. He couldn’t fault the decisions that’d been made, though. It’d taken four years before the boys could hold their human form for more than thirty minutes without help. He was surprised they’d made it to adulthood, except that he understood the Concilio wanted to know what would happen with mammals who were born in their animal form. They were an experiment. The fact they were identical twins who could be observed from toddlerhood through adulthood had probably also weighed into the cost/benefit ratio of the expensive experiment, though he figured the investment had paid off in the long run, since they’d whored the boys out for ten years and then sold them for several sizeable fortunes on the auction block.

But they were no longer an experiment, and no longer merely pleasure slaves. Under Brooke’s rules, they were now seen as sentient beings who deserved a chance to try to learnhow to be free. If they didn’t want it, if it turned out they were happier as well-treated slaves, then that could be arranged as well.

Chapter Thirteen

Monday evening arrived, and Dev looked into the outdoor cage and watched the two cougars tear into the four chickens and eat them. Elijah played with his second chicken a little before finally killing and eating it, but Ezra got right down to business with both of his.

When they were back in human form, they tried to trick Dev, but he knew which man was which, and he told them there would be further consequences for lying, to be given after the punishment they would already be getting for withholding important safety information.

He led them to one of the jail cells with a smooth concrete floor and watched Mikael and Claire put each man into a humbler. The device snapped on between the balls and the cock, pressing the balls into the end of the sac. Two curved pieces went out to the side, along the backs of the thighs. It kept them kneeling and bent over — if they tried to straighten at the hips, it would feel as if their ball sacs were being ripped off.

A substantial butt plug with cinnamon lube was quickly inserted into both bottoms, and then rice was poured on the floor in front of them. Both were lifted and then settled back down on the rice. Dev turned a dry-erase board around so they could see what was written on it, and Claire put two short stools in front of them, while Mikael settled a stack of paper and a pen on each.

“I decided,” Dev told them, “that you should write this statement a thousand times before you will be released from your bondage and allowed off the rice. Based on input from yourprevious handlers, this means both will need to finish before either can be released. You will write the statement ten times per sheet of paper. If you mess up, that paper goes into the garbage and you start again. If all ten statements aren’t neat, attractive, and perfect, that sheet of paper will not count. As each sheet is checked over, it will be noted on the whiteboard if it meets expectations, and it will be put into the trash if it does not.”

Written on the whiteboard was:

My trainer is my partner, helping my brother and me succeed. He is not the enemy; he is on my side. It is important I give any information to Dev and/or Brooke that could create or become a challenge, or that can help my brother and me succeed.

Brooke stepped up beside Dev and said, “I trust Dev to train you, but it’s important to understand that if you should get away from the coterie house and do something to attract the attention of humans, the police, or the media, the Concilio will hold me responsible. Yes, I will then hold Dev responsible, but the buck stops with me. So, there will be times I will add to his punishments. Once you finish Dev’s statement, you will write another sentence, which will be unveiled when it is time. You will write it in Italian five hundred times, and then in English five hundred times. You should know that while Dev’s statement has forty-eight words made up of one hundred ninety-one letters, mine only has twenty-two words, made up of ninety-nine letters in English, and nineteen words with one hundred and one letters in Italian. It is approximately one-third the length, so when you finish Dev’s portion, you will be around sixty-five percent of the way through.”

She telepathed Dev,They understood the percent portion of that as a pie-chart.

Their math skills will need to be improved upon, but I don’t recommend we jump straight to it. We have time, and I think we’ll get farther if we can show them a need for it.

Agreed.