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“She just told me a bunch of stories,” says Knight. “The last one… I don’t even know. She made me think it was going to give me answers, but it had absolutely nothing to do with our situation.”

“Stories about the teeth?” says Calix. “What’d she say?”

“Uh, it’s a lot,” says Knight.

Calix gestures for everyone to sit down at the table. “Tell us what she said, Knight.”

Everyone sits down.

Knight starts talking. He tells us about going to play chess with Theodorus and about how Theodorus took him to Kyvelki.

Calix concedes this was not a terrible way to go to see her, but that Knight shouldn’t have gone on his own.

Then Knight starts relating all the stories about the origins of alphas and omegas, none of which I’ve heard before, but they all do sound like folklore stories, I have to admit.

He tells us how Kyvelki said that the stories are told to confirm that the Polloi have only two choices—endure tyranny or erase themselves.

Calix snorts. “Well, how about option three, which is to stop the tyranny within the goddess-damned religion, Kyvelki?” He gestures at the ceiling, shaking his head in disgust.

“Yeah,” says Knight, nodding. “Good point.”

Calix holds up his finger, as if he’s seconds away from launching into a diatribe of some kind. His nostrils flare. And then he lowers his finger, shaking his head. “Go on. What else did she say?”

Knight massages the bridge of his nose, searching for his train of thought.

The final thing he tells is the story about the omega who brought about her own destruction by actively trying to thwart it. It reminds me of other stories like that, tragic stories, like Oedipus Rex or something.

So, when he’s done, I say, “The point of stories like that is always that everything’s fated, and you can’t stop it, no matter what you do.”

“Oh, is that the point?” says Knight. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and maybe I’ve been too specific. I was wondering if it she was trying to say that you were making us violent by expecting violence from us.”

“No,” says Striker, dismissing this. “We can’t risk her. We need to be careful, that’s all.”

“Well,” I say, “if we can sedate Dr. Acker, so we can be sure she’s not a problem, and if we have other alphas standing by in case someone gets out of control—you know, I’m thinking that Arrow should have just bit me that day, Knight. After you’d bitten him.”

“It’s risky,” says Striker.

“But I think it’s a little too much on Calix’s shoulders right now,” I say. “I think he needs not to be the only one bonded to me.”

“Hey, I’m all right, omega,” Calix assures me.

I lean back and kiss him on the lips. “I know you’ll do everything you can for me, baby, but it’s our job to look out for each other. We’re pack. I can feel your strain.”

The ends of Calix’s lips turn downward, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” I say, “we should do it one at a time. First, we knock out Acker, then, I get another bite. The question is who it should be.”

“You decide,” says Arrow.

“I don’t know if I should,” I say.

“Then Striker,” says Arrow. “Because he’s got no bond at all.”

“Okay,” I say, turning to look at Striker. “That good with you?”

Striker takes us all in, looking into everyone’s eyes, and then he nods.

“About that story, though,” I say, furrowing my brow.

“It’s bullshit,” says Knight. “The truth is, no one here knows anything about anything. They don’t know why we have the snake teeth.

They don’t know if we’re anything special.

They sure as hell don’t know how to turn off the brainwashing that Acker did.

We are on our own here. We’re just wading out into the void.

The only way we’re going to find things out is by trying things out and seeing what happens. ”

“Yeah, but that’s a risk,” says Striker. “It’s a risk to our omega .”

“We have to believe we won’t hurt her,” says Knight. “She’s…” He looks at me. “You’re the center of everything, and you know that, and we all know that. We feel it.”

striker

CALIX AND LOTUS go down to administer the sedative to Acker.

The rest of us stay upstairs, milling around, worried.

We all know it’s better we don’t see that woman, but none of us like that she has so much power over us.

I’m nervous.

I get to bite her, after all, and it’s a big deal.

When I was sixteen, I had never done anything with a girl.

Or a guy, for that matter, not that homosexuality was particularly encouraged in my upbringing.

I grew up in a pretty Catholic family. When I went to study to become a priest, I was exposed to a lot of different ideas, and I learned that Catholicism was a very big umbrella, big enough to encompass a lot of different ideas.

And that was when I began to understand that if God was really omnipotent and omnipresent, he had to be big, too.

Big enough to hold contradictory ideas, even, to embody one thing and also embody the opposite.

If God created everything, God would know about everything, and God wouldn’t eschew anything.

But back then, it didn’t seem like that.

There was a girl.

She liked me a lot. This was communicated to me by another girl, who came up to me in the lunch line one day to ask me what I thought about the first girl. Her name was Natalie.

I had never thought anything about Natalie one way or the other, was the truth of it.

But it was a novel idea, being wanted like that.

So, I asked her on a date.

She said yes.

We went out.

It was fine.

I even kissed her, I remember, but it was…

I got this feeling when I was out with her, this feeling of a power differential, because I could tell that she liked me more than I liked her, and it seemed sort of wrong for me to continue to string her along when I could tell my feelings for her weren’t nearly that intense.

So, I politely ended it.

And then I spent years looking for the intensity within myself and never finding it.

At some point, I decided I never would. I’d be a priest and devote myself to God. I wouldn’t need a romantic relationship, because I would be a servant to all God’s children. I would feel love in that way, and in some ways, it would be better than a romantic connection, I thought.

For so long, I thought I’d never experience anything like that.

Now, I’m going to bite Lotus.

I am going to create a life bond with my omega, and I am going to tie myself forever, to this, with these other four people. The five of us will be a pack, and we’ll be inextricably intertwined.

I’m nervous.

I can’t wait.

I never wanted anything the way I want this.

What if something goes wrong?

Eventually, Lotus and Calix come back up.

Then, it’s awkward.

Calix says that we could have some privacy, if we want.

I shut this down. “No, if something goes wrong, I want to be sure that I can’t hurt her. I want you guys there to stop me if I lose it.”

“Well, what are the odds that we all lose it?” says Arrow in a subdued voice. He looks at Knight. “I was hoping our bond could stop it, but it couldn’t.”

“That was with Acker there, though,” says Knight. “She’s asleep, right?”

“Right,” says Lotus.

“We’ll be fine,” says Knight.

“You always say that,” I mutter at him.

“And we’re always fine,” says Knight. “Aren’t we? She’s alive, isn’t she? She’s not permanently damaged. She’s—”

“Here’s what I think,” I say. “I think I should just do the bite.”

“That’s what we’re doing,” says Lotus, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, no sex,” I say. “Just… bite.”

“You think that matters?” she says.

“I think that Dr. Acker got us to associate blood and erections, blood and sex, blood and claiming. She… there is blood.”

Arrow sucks in a sharp, noisy breath. “There is blood,” he says.

“Okay, you guys,” says Knight. “The bite is completely different—”

“And that’s how she did it,” I say. “She used the bite. That’s why it’s locked in. So, we decouple the bite from sex.”

“Yes,” breathes Arrow, nodding in relief.

Lotus shrugs. “I guess it’s fine.”

“It seems… a little sad,” says Calix. “That sex, the bite sex, it was phenomenal.”

Lotus nods. “Yeah, but we’ll have a bond afterwards, Striker. We’ll have phenomenal.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’d rather be your bitten and bonded alpha and sacrifice the bite sex.”

She brushes her hair away from her ear, remembering where my spot is. “Well, go ahead, then,” she whispers, her voice going flirtatious and eager.

I step forward and brush her skin, right there, my spot.

And then, nothing happens, because I don’t have my teeth. I even open my mouth and touch my normal canines.

“Little performance anxiety there?” says Lotus, teasing me, smiling widely. “Can’t get your teeth up?”

“Uh… it just occurs to me that the only time they show up is when I’m also aroused.”

“Is that safe?” she says.

I sigh. “I don’t know.”

“We can do the teeth without arousal,” says Arrow to Knight. “Right? You did it to me earlier today. Like twice.”

“Yeah, I can do it,” says Knight, and opens his mouth, and there are the teeth, and Arrow makes a little pleasure noise, and then he’s got them too.

“But that’s… like, because of your bond,” I say quietly.

The two exchange a glance and shrug at the same time before turning back to me.

“So, how are you doing it?” I say to Knight.

“Uh, I just think about biting,” says Knight.

I turn back to Lotus, and I think about sinking my teeth into her flesh, think about her skin parting underneath the sensitive sharp tips of my teeth—which are expanding, but so is my cock, and I’m getting a knot—and then I’m suddenly awash in the idea of blood.

Lotus’s blood.

Omega blood.

But then I’m right back in the lab, Acker behind me as she forces me to stare at a slideshow of broken and bloody female bodies, some of them just gore and others sexual in the way they’re rendered—there are drawings of men fucking wounds, biting cartoon hearts, fucked up things—and she’s talking in that Acker voice of hers.

Such a good boy, Striker.

Kill her for me.

Kill her for Dr. Acker.

Make me proud.

And before I can stop myself, I’ve tackled Lotus to the floor, and I have pressure on her skull, holding her head down as I grit my teeth together, thinking about tearing her apart .