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Dev smiled. “I did, and I appreciate your honesty. No one’s in trouble. As it happens, Genie enjoys sex with more than one person at a time, and — despite your treatment of her the first time you met her — she likes the two of you as well.”

Ezra stopped eating and stared at Dev. “Seriously? Those tits are like a wet dream.”

“Two wet dreams,” Elijah agreed. “One for each of us.”

“To be clear,” Dev told them, “if I allow it, neither of you will have permission to treat her as a sexual plaything outside of the room we all have sex in — and I will be in the room the entire time.” And another guard would be right outside the door, so he could step in if there was a problem Dev couldn’t handle by himself, but Dev didn’t foresee an issue because the boys would be restrained this first time.

“Here’s an important point I’d like you both to note. Are you listening?”

Ezra said yes; Elijah glared at him. They’d work on that, but not this moment. “Gaining freedoms sometimes goes back and forth. You show you’re capable of making good decisions and you gain more freedoms. When you make a boneheaded decision, you’ll lose some freedoms until you can prove you’ve learned enough to get them back. When you first start out, it isn’t expected you’ll always make good decisions”

He let that soak in a few moments before continuing. “If you’re given freedoms you aren’t comfortable with, it’s your responsibility to talk to me or Brooke about it, so we can either back off on it a little, or provide a little more oversight to help you out. I don’t want to set you up to fail, so anytime you’re worried about having too much room to get in trouble, talk to us. Let us help.”

They stared at him as if he’d grown purple eyes on antennae sticking out of his head, and he gave them an example. “Let’s say you’re given permission to have sex with any shapeshifter in the flock who agrees to have sex with you. Everything is fine for a few weeks, but then you try to pressure someone into having sex with you who isn’t interested — though youdostop when she safewords to show you how uncomfortable she is. Since you didn’t actually lay a hand on her, and since you stopped when she safeworded, you won’t be punished. However, you’ll lose thepermission you had to have sex with anyone from the flock who’s interested. You may even be put into a cock cage, if there’s a reason to believe you can’t do better. If you want to have sex with someone, you’ll have to go through a coterie member to negotiate it, and you’ll have to pay the coterie member for the service out of your own funds, which you’ll get by doing odd jobs for the coterie, or by feeding more vampires than you’d ordinarily be scheduled to feed.”

Ezra looked at Elijah. “He’s covering two things, here. The cock-cage thing? That’s to tell us if we don’t follow orders on our own, they’ll make it so we don’t have a choice. The other part is about learning how to make good choices.”

“Excellent,” Dev told Ezra. “You are absolutely right. Punishment for not following a direct order will be much worse than making a bad decision that wasn’t a specific rule you broke. Since, in our imaginary incident, you didn’t touch her and you respected the safeword, you followed the house rules, but pressuring her? That’s a fine line you have to learn by trial and error. So, consequences designed to give you more time to learn that, but no punishment.”

“What does this have to do with us being able to bone the owl?” Elijah asked.

“You’ll both be restrained for most of the session,” Dev told him. “Trust is earned. There are a million ways to show me you’re trustworthy, and just as many to show me you aren’t. If you enjoy being restrained for sex, then don’t misbehave because you don’t want to be untied next time. Tell me, and I’ll try to fashion the scenes so your kinks are seen to as well as the others in the scene.”

Ezra looked at Elijah, and then back to Dev. “Some of this sounds too good to be true.”

“The really old vampires who run Europe scare me,” Dev told them. “I can’t imagine them finding enough humanity to figureout how to raise young boys into young men. And really, they didn’t — they were raising young boys to eventually grow up to be sex slaves. I don’t know how accurate the notes on you are from your previous teachers, trainers, and handlers, but they seem fairly contiguous and quite detailed. You were told what to do and when to do it, and you were punished when you didn’t follow orders, but I don’t believe anyone ever made you a part of the game plan.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘game plan’,” Elijah said.

“The path your life would take, will take, can take,” Dev said. “Who do you want to be? If freeperson, then how do you want to make a living? Do you want to build houses? Become a lawyer? Cut hair? Drive a train? If you aren’t comfortable as a freeperson, is there a particular kind of slave you’d prefer to be? A cook, maybe, instead of a sex slave. Or perhaps you want to land somewhere in between, maybe a massage therapist who isn’t quite a slave but also isn’t a freeperson — enough restrictions to keep you safe and happy, but not so many you can’t breathe.”

There was a knock on the door, and Dev looked at his watch. A little early, but that was okay.

“Come in,” Dev said.

Clive walked in, and both boys seemed to shrink into their seats.

“He isn’t here to hurt you,” Dev assured them. “The honey badger scent fills the room, doesn’t it?”

“Not just a honey badger,” Ezra said.

“Gianthoney badger,” Elijah whispered.

“I am,” Clive told them with a smile. “I don’t want to be bad, don’t want to be the boogeyman of shifter kind, but it’s sohard, sometimes.” He sat on the sofa, fifteen feet away, and both of thecougars breathed a little easier, but weren’t even close to relaxed or at ease.

Dev knew the giant honey badgers in Europe were used as the threat, the worst thing that can happen if you really fuck up. One of the most horrifying ways to die. It was a fair bet the twins had watched a giant honey badger wound and then eat at least one of their fellow slaves, possibly starting while he was still alive — the show meant as a deterrent, so the threat of death by honey badger was quite real.

“When Clive arrived, he had massive problems with control. It’s been four years, and it’s taken a lot of work, but he’s almost always okay now.”

“Brooke helped me so much when it came to controlling my inner beast, but Dev talked to me about choices. Do I want to make my own choices, or do I want others to make them for me? That was a no-brainer for me — I want to make my own. I know others who have a different answer, because they aren’t comfortable with the responsibility of choice.” Clive looked at Dev and back to the twins. “The thing is, I’ll likely never have enough control by the Concilio’s standards to be completely free. Brooke has given me the test the Concilio will require I pass, and I’ve failed it all three times we’ve tried. I can’t get through it, but I’ve decided it’s okay that I can’t, and I don’t intend to take it again. Brooke has given me a way to live the life I’d mostly lead while free, even though she owns me. There are checks and balances, so I can have enough freedoms to be who I mostly want to be, but it would be quite difficult for me to hurt an innocent.”

He looked at Dev, who said, “The coterie also has a Tasmanian devil shifter, and he’s given me the okay to tell you he’s happy with where he is, as well. He isn’t completely free, but he’s living the life he wants to live.”

“So you’re saying if you and Brooke can help a Tasmanian devil and a giant honey badger find control, you can help a couple of fucked up wrong-born cougars?” Ezra asked.

“How about different-born?” Dev suggested. “Different doesn’t mean wrong. You’re unique, sure, but I don’t see any insurmountable issues.”

“Dev says ya’ll want to learn to drive?” Clive asked.