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knight

MY PLAN FOR the morning is to bite Lotus.

I think that Striker and I should do it at the same time while we’re both knotting her, one of us in her pussy and one of us in her ass.

I was basically knotted down while I watched Lotus get double penetrated by Calix and Arrow last night. Striker played with me while he knotted my ass, and it felt great, and it was hot as all hell, but it’s only a preamble, and I know that everything is better once we’re all bitten in.

We need to be claimed by our omega.

But early in the morning, earlier than Calix’s alarm even goes off (assuming it is going off, because he said last night he wasn’t going to work, and it’s a long drive to Connecticut and back every day) I wake up and someone is tapping on the window.

I get up, pulling a stray quilt around my waist, and I see it’s Theodorus out there.

He gestures with his head for me to come with him.

I get dressed and go out of the house to meet him.

It’s chilly outside, the autumn air making me hunch into the sweatshirt I’ve put on.

He’s wearing an old-man cardigan, but he seems pretty spry for an old guy. I don’t even know how old he is. I wonder.

“Walk with me?” he says.

“Sure,” I say and fall into step with him.

We go walking out in the direction of the pond where I found Theodorus yesterday, but we veer off before we get there, and we end up walking through a little foot path in a strip of woods.

It’s not until we’ve been walking for long enough that we’re out of sight of any of the houses that Theodorus speaks. “Kyvelki went to talk to Penelope after you left yesterday,” he says, looking around as if he’s worried someone’s listening.

I look around, too, feeling his paranoia infect me a little bit. “You’re making me think that’s a bad thing.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” he says. “So, I got her to bring me along. They talk over us all the time, you know, talk over us like we aren’t even here.

They expect us to do all the work when they make the decisions, because we’re the muscle, but they don’t ask us what we think.

They just expect us to do whatever they ask. ”

“Who does?” I say.

“Women,” he says, looking at me like I’m crazy.

“Right,” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah, it’s not like that out there, is it? I hear women serve men, not the other way around.”

“It’s… sometimes, maybe,” I say. “But it’s more equal than not, or people try to make it equal.” I square my shoulders. “I don’t know if it really can be equal. We’re not the same, you know?”

He nods. “I do know. And they need us to be their enforcers. They can’t beat their alphas into submission themselves. They need another alpha to do that.”

“Is there a lot of that out here?”

“What?”

“Beating people?” I don’t really care, I guess.

A part of me is even intrigued, a little bit, like…

if I hadn’t found this pack, and I wasn’t in love with them, maybe I’d have been interested in the idea of being able to beat people into submission.

Of course, what do you do with them once they submit to you?

“More when you’re your age,” he says with a little laugh. “The blood’s hotter back then.”

“So, yeah,” I say. “This place is… why do you stay here? I don’t think this is a good place.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “You’re here too.”

“Yeah, but we were on the run from people trying to kill us and they have law enforcement on their side, and they’ll at least arrest us, if not shoot us on sight, so we needed somewhere to hide out.”

“So, you’re telling me it’s better somewhere else?” He shrugs at me. “For people like us? For alphas?”

“It’s…” I hesitate. “I mean, better is maybe a relative term, because I’m thinking that there are things that balance everything.

Like, you don’t get beaten into submission out there, but they don’t want you to ever touch an omega, and they encourage you to be sedated every time you go into a rut, and you’re sort of…

suppressed all the time. So, I don’t know.

This isn’t a good place, but out there isn’t good either. ”

He nods. “Right.”

I sigh, shoving my hands into my pockets.

“I couldn’t leave my omega,” he says. “You get that, right?”

“Even if she orders your mates to beat you?”

“Well, Kyvelki’s never been that way,” he says with a shrug. He considers. “A little. Only in bed. Which can be exciting.”

“Okay, I don’t need to know about that,” I decide.

“Yes, we’re getting off topic.”

“You overheard what they said? Kyvelki and Penelope?”

“She’s bringing the omega who was Calix’s arranged mate here.”

“Wait, Calix had another omega?”

“He ran before he ever met her,” says Theodorus. “And honestly, I might have done the same in his position. She’s not like the omegas here, that one. She already has ten mates.”

“Ten,” I say.

“Some omegas get greedy, even though they don’t have the time or the energy to pay attention to nearly that many alphas,” he says.

“They just want more. And this omega is that way. Penelope’s made some snap judgment about your omega, says she’s a weakling, unworthy of her alphas, unworthy of a scent match.

Meanwhile, taking an intact scent-match group of alphas, it’d be quite a feather in Selene’s cap. ”

“Taking?” I say. “What do you mean? You said she has ten mates already.”

“She’d be happy to have fourteen,” he says with a shrug.

My lips part. “We would never…”

“You’re still not claimed,” he says.

“But some of us are,” I say. “We’re working on it. It’s complicated.”

“It’s not complicated, boy,” he says, chuckling. “You just bite.”

“Okay, regardless,” I say, holding up both of my hands. “This Selene person, she can’t force me to bite her, anyway—”

“Sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“They find ways,” he says, letting out a breath and looking off into the distance. “It’s not always about the threat of physical pain. They find people you care about. They threaten them. They find things you want and they dangle them in front of you. They find ways to make you do things.”

That sounds like hell to me. “I take it back. It’s better out there,” I say firmly. “You should get the fuck out of this place, Theodorus.”

He shakes his head. “I love my omega. I live for my omega.”

“Well, I live for my omega,” I say. “Which is why I would never bite another one.”

He shrugs again. “Maybe not. Maybe so.”

“Calix has already bitten her,” I say. “So this Selene person couldn’t have him.”

“Not unless your omega was dead,” he says.

I draw back, confusion rippling through me. “They’re going to kill Lotus?”

“Selene will challenge her, most likely,” says Theodorus.

“It’s an ancient ritual that is almost never practiced anymore.

The omegas face off in a series of tournaments to prove physical prowess and skill.

It’s ridiculous because most omegas these days aren’t what you’d call skilled or even physically in shape.

But I think it’s fair to say that Selene might have a bit of an edge on your omega.

I understand she’s slight and weak and very submissive, like a beta woman. ”

“ No, ” I say, very defensive.

He laughs again.

“But you just said she would be killed,” I say. “So, what? This tournament is to the death?”

“Not necessarily,” says Theodorus. “But if she’s gotten bites, it will need to be. If she loses, her bonds will be severed, and death is the only way to sever a life bond. It will be deemed that she is not worthy of alphas, that she is not omega enough to deserve all of you.”

“Fuck,” I whisper.

“Yes,” he says. “I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” I say.

He reaches out and touches my arm, giving my wrist a little squeeze. “Goddess protect you, boy, and your pack.”

calix

I GET UP when my alarm goes off, and I notice Knight isn’t in the nest.

I find him in the kitchen, sitting at the table, gazing glumly into a coffee cup. He looks up when I come into the room. “Morning. I was wondering if you were going to work or not.”

I cross the room to see if there’s coffee in the pot, already made. There is, enough for at least one cup. I pour it out into a mug for myself and start another pot brewing. I like a lot of coffee in the morning. “I don’t even know if I am,” I say.

“I think you should stay home,” he says. “Well, actually, I think we need to run.”

“Run?” I’m still working on the new pot of coffee. “What are you talking about?”

“Apparently, Selene isn’t giving up on you easily.”

I stiffen, and I can’t breathe for a second. Finally, I can talk, but my voice is all strangled. “What do you know about that?”

“Theodorus says he overheard Kyvelki and Penelope talking and that Penelope called in Selene to challenge Lotus, because Penelope doesn’t think Lotus deserves us. Theodorus says all of us would be given to this Selene person. Which… not happening, obviously, but—”

“Challenge?” I interrupt. “They don’t do that anymore. The last time they did that, it brought a lot of negative attention to the Polloi, and people went to goddess-damned jail. No one does those omega challenges anymore.”

“You know what it is?”

I bring my coffee over and sit down opposite him. “It’s barbaric and stupid.”

“Theodorus says that if she doesn’t win, they kill her,” he says. “Because that’s the only way to sever a life bond.”

I take a gulp of coffee. “Yeah, could happen. But seriously, the last time anyone did challenges like this was probably in the 1950s. It’s been a long time. It’s bad press for the Polloi.”

“Well,” he says, eyeing me. “Maybe they’ve been doing it all along, but just quietly.”

I lean back in my chair, contemplating my coffee. “You could be right.”

“This is why you ran?” he says. “This Selene person? She was supposed to be your omega?”

“It was arranged,” I say. “She already had a bunch of mates, way too many. I was visiting my sister, who was a beta but got knocked up by some alpha in a Texas pack. Shit like that happens, in packs like that, where omegas have too many men to keep track of? They’ll mate to like twelve or sixteen men, and they fuck them for a while and then just get bored of them, and those guys will end up with sidepieces, which their omegas will tolerate, because it’s easier than admitting they can’t satisfy twenty alphas, right?

So, anyway, I just went to see my baby niece.

And Selene—she’s the heir apparent Vasilissa at that pack—saw me, and I guess she wanted me, I don’t know.

Two weeks later, it’s all set up. I have to go down there and join that pack and I…

” I set down my coffee. “I was never happy in the Polloi, not once in my whole life, you get that? But the prospect of that being the rest of my life, being the plaything of some woman who would eventually get bored with me and who never had enough toys?”

“I would have left, too,” says Knight. “I would have left way before that.”

“No, you don’t get it,” I say. “Leave how? This is all I ever knew. When I left, I left my entire family and I had nothing. I went out into the world with the clothes on my back, no money, no food, no marketable fucking skills…” I scoot down in the chair and gaze up at the ceiling.

“It still kind of amazes me I did that.”

“I do get it,” says Knight. “I just have never felt any real connection to people like that, not until…” He eyes me. “It still kind of amazes me that I care about all of you as much as I do.”

I’m a little disturbed by that, but the funny thing is that it doesn’t change anything.

He’s my mate. He kind of scares me, but I trust him.

I pick the coffee up again. “We can’t leave.

What are we going to do with Acker? She’s going to wake up here in…

” I check my phone. “Half hour, maybe. I was going to dose her again with another sedative, but we want her to wake up and have water or she’s just going to die. ”

He shrugs. “Fuck Acker. Just fuck her. She doesn’t matter. Lotus’s safety matters. Lotus’s life matters.”

“Yeah, but if we just leave her here, she either dies—which is better, I guess—or she gets free somehow, and that’s not good for us.”

“No, true,” he mutters.

“Where are we going to go?” I say. “We have nowhere to go. That’s why we came here.”

“Yeah, but we weren’t going to stay here forever, were we?”

“No,” I say immediately, even though I suppose, when I first conceived of this idea, I didn’t think it through.

My first thought was that this would be a place to hide Lotus, who—at the time—was so damaged she could not speak.

I thought she might be taken care of here, because she was an omega, and all omegas are given a sense of reverence in the Polloi. So, I figured she’d be safe here.

But then the situation changed, and I don’t know what I thought. It was like I had forgotten what it’s like to be here, where being an alpha means you’re a second-class citizen. We can’t stay here. We have to leave.

“I guess,” I say, “I wanted us to have the bites first, before we go.”

“Well, we’ll just do that now,” he says. “And then me and Striker sit in the back seat with her and tend while you drive.”

“Drive us where, though?” I say. “And what the fuck about Acker?” I get up, taking my coffee with me.

“Where are you going?”

“To wake Lotus up,” I say. “It’s her call.”

“Why is it her call?” he says, getting up from the table. “You think like them, don’t you? That omegas are in charge?”

I hesitate, because I don’t know if he’s right. “Well, we can’t make the decision for everyone.”

“The fuck we can’t,” he mutters.

I eye him. Yeah, that’s his modus operandi, isn’t it? Knight just acts. That’s the reason Acker is here with us at all.

But that’s also the reason we know this information, about Selene. If Knight hadn’t taken it upon himself to go and make contact with Theodorus, we’d have been blindsided.

“How would that work?” I say. “You think you’ll just bark everyone into submission?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “If Lotus were to die, I would…” His face twists, and his lower lip trembles. He looks away, overcome. “I never felt like this in my life .”

“No, I know,” I say, because I do, and because I’ve bitten her, and it’s all more crazy intense now than it was before.

She’s awake now. I feel it through the bond. I may have woken her with my intention to go and wake her up. I feel her soft, sweet presence inhabiting me in the way she can do through the bond, and it’s intoxicating. I can’t help but smile.

She’s up and entering the room in moments. “Why do you guys think I can’t take this Selene person?”