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knight

I’M ON THE porch of this little shack of a house. It’s autumn, and the changing leaves are beautiful in this part of New York. In the distance, there’s nothing much but trees, though there are little houses and trailers and campers dotted in between the foliage if I look out off the porch.

I pace, though, not focusing on beauty or this compound.

“You’re making me nervous,” says Arrow. He’s leaning over the railing of the porch, facing outward.

I ignore him and pace more.

Striker comes to the door and I veer towards him, head down. “Look, did you tell her—”

But Lotus is there, behind Striker.

So, I break off what I was saying, all of the breath in my lungs going out in a whoosh.

“Knight,” says Lotus, “he did tell me you want to try again.”

“I can do it this time,” I say. “She got to me before, but she won’t get to me now. I can kill her. I’ve been fantasizing about killing her for a long time now. I know I can do it. I killed before she ever messed with my head, you know, so I’m beyond her control.”

Lotus pushes open the screen door and comes around Striker.

She’s a lot smaller than me, but she has a presence, something that she’s coming into, something that she’s beginning to inhabit.

I like it. She smells good, almost regal, and she makes me feel safe in some ephemeral way, like she’s going to protect me.

Which is strange, because I also know that I am meant to protect her.

That is what an alpha does for his omega, and my purpose in life is to keep this woman safe and happy. Everything I do, I do for her.

That’s also strange.

I never thought I’d ever do anything for anyone besides myself.

But… it’s nice, actually, caring about someone else like that? It’s really nice.

Lotus puts her hand on my chest. “Knight. I don’t want her dead.”

I back away from her, annoyed, throwing both my hands up above my head. “I kidnapped her for the express purpose of killing her.”

“Yeah,” says Striker, “but then, you know, you didn’t.”

I glare at him.

“Calix says that you were easily talked out of it,” says Striker. “You can’t think that’s not because of her influence over us.”

“I hate that woman,” I seethe.

“We all hate her,” says Arrow. “But she’s in our heads.”

“And that’s what we want her to do,” says Lotus. “Is get out of your heads. She’s the only one who knows how.”

“I don’t think she does,” I say. “I don’t think that’s even possible. Like, if you get a thing associated in your head with sex, it sticks around. You can’t dissociate it.”

“What are you saying?” says Lotus. “Of course you can.”

“How?” I spread my hands. “Okay, you guys remember the thing with the rats?”

“The lemon-scent thing?” says Arrow. “Because I thought that was weird, really, and—”

“They also did this thing where they got rats to associate sex with the female rats wearing something, and they said this was like lingerie. Like, there’s no reason to be turned on by lingerie, except we have made these associations in our brains—”

“Bullshit,” says Arrow, turning away from the railing. “There’s a reason to be turned on by lingerie, and it’s because the woman is nearly naked.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “But before there were clothes, we were all just naked, right? Like rats are?”

“But we are not now,” says Arrow. “Which is why we associate nudity with sex.”

“No, you’re proving the point of the study,” I say.

“If we didn’t wear clothes, we would not associate nudity with sex, because everyone would be naked all the fucking time, and we’d just see naked people constantly, and we wouldn’t even think about sex, because we’d be used to nudity.

But because we almost never see people naked, and because people are naked when we have sex, we associate nudity with sex. ”

“Okay,” said Lotus. “Okay, but I’m still not understanding why it is you can’t dissociate this?

Because, like, this one time, I went skinny dipping with a group of friends.

It was in college. We were drunk. I think, at first, the nudity was kind of a novelty, but after a couple hours, it had totally worn off, and I wasn’t even turned on by it. I was just used to it.”

I blink at her. She’s not wrong, I guess. I know what she means, how you can become desensitized to a thing, to a trigger like that. How if seeing uncovered skin is commonplace, it doesn’t affect you as intensely. But I don’t know how to use that.

“So, anyway,” she said, “I think you can dissociate.”

“Yeah?” says Arrow. “You pretty much not turned on by naked men now?”

Her lips part. “Oh,” she says in a different voice. “I guess it was kind of temporary, the dissociation, wasn’t it?”

I chuckle.

Arrow grins too. “Hey, you are turned on by naked men, right?”

She smiles. “As if turning me on is an issue, Arrow.”

We have real names. These names, these were given to us in Cedar Falls. It’s strange that we don’t adopt our old names, but they simply don’t seem right anymore.

“The thing is,” I say, “whatever things you have that you associate with sex, those are the things that turn you on. You don’t usually want to make them not turn you on.”

“Well, what if you were turned on by something that you didn’t want to be turned on by?” says Lotus.

“I mean, we’ve tried to undo those sorts of things,” I say. “As a species. But it’s mostly turned out bad, like aversion therapy if you were gay or something.”

“Oh,” says Lotus, nodding. “Right.”

It’s quiet.

I start pacing again. “I think once you’ve got an association with it, it’s locked in.”

“It’s not the same thing,” says Arrow. “Being homosexual is something internal, not something you associate.”

“We really don’t know,” I say.

“Oh, God, are we still doing this weird homophobia thing with you?” says Arrow.

“You know, I didn’t know I was attracted to men either, but it’s been this way ever since we saw each other in the facility.

Really, the way it feels to me is that, like, when that side of me woke up, the one with the memories, I remember being straight, but now I’m bi.

The straight part feels like the weird part to me. ”

“Agreed,” says Striker, “although I was just kind of all around repressed back then. I thought I was asexual.” He laughs quietly.

“It’s not a homophobia thing,” I say, still pacing. “I’m totally accepting of my own bisexuality, I swear, it’s fine. I’m just saying, we don’t know why people are homosexual. It’s not really natural.”

“Oh, my God ,” says Arrow, laughing in disbelief.

“No, I’m not saying it like that.” I stop pacing to glare at him.

“It’s very natural for animals of all kinds to engage in homosexual behavior.

Every species does it. But it’s weird to specialize.

Like, most creatures are bisexual. Or, uh, opportunistic, I guess.

” I shake my head and start pacing again.

“This doesn’t matter. We’re getting off topic. ”

“Maybe we should get back on topic so that you can stop being a bigoted dick,” says Arrow.

“I’m not being bigoted,” I say. “Whatever it is that humans do with sex, we do it in this different way than animals do.”

“Okay,” says Lotus. “So, then maybe rat studies are not the best place to be getting information on how to handle this.”

She’s right. I groan, hanging my head, still pacing.

“Here’s what I think,” says Striker. “I think there are two components here. An instinctive one and something else, something learned or associated or whatever. That part, we could alter, but the instinctive part we can’t.”

“Sure,” says Lotus. “So, you guys aren’t instinctively trying to kill me.”

“No,” says Striker, “which is why we haven’t.”

“And you won’t,” says Lotus. “If I could just… believe that. I don’t know why I’m worried—”

“We’re all worried,” says Striker. “We don’t want to risk you, Lotus. You’re our omega.”

I’m still pacing. “The violent part is instinctive for me,” I say. I used to be a mafia hitman. I’ve always liked killing things. I’ve always been good at it. I self-diagnosed myself as fitting a psychopath profile when I was a teenager, but I’ve never told anyone that.

When I figured it out, at first I felt really relieved and a little bit smug, like I was hot shit and really superior to everyone else. It was like, for the first time, I made sense.

But later, thinking about it just made me sad.

It was like I didn’t actually want to be superior to everyone, because the thing about being superior is that it’s the same as being inferior. It means you’re different, “other,” and you don’t belong. And, uh, I knew I was never going to belong, but some part of me still kind of wanted to.

Not so much that I would not be what I was, but…

Anyway. I don’t like to think about that.

And it’s different now, different now that I’m in this pack, because, well, I do belong, and, uh, it’s nice.

“Is the violence instinctive for you, really, though?” says Lotus. “Because of the three of you, Knight, you’re the one who seems the most sure you won’t kill me.”

I stop pacing and look at her and then at Striker and Arrow. She’s right. They seem warier than I do. I draw in a breath, folding my arms over my chest.

“Are you not sure?” she says. “Are you just pretending to be sure?”

“No, I’m sure,” I say. “I guess it’s because, um, something about the way I feel about you overrides that other part of me. It’s an instinct, and it’s strong, but my alpha instincts are stronger, and they won’t let me hurt you.”

“Well, that’s probably true for all of you, then,” says Lotus, looking to Striker.

He won’t meet her gaze.

“Yeah, I think so,” I say. “Hasn’t Calix said that a couple of times, that we can’t kill you, because you’re our scent match?”

“It’s only that, it’s not just killing that’s the problem here,” says Arrow. “I’ll never kill Lotus. I know that. But we’ve all hurt her when we’ve been triggered. Hell, I forced myself on her. She had to use a stun gun on me to stop me.”

“You couldn’t help that,” says Lotus quickly.

“Well, look at it this way,” says Arrow.

“If any other woman I cared about, my sister or my mother or one of my friends, were to say to me that they were in a relationship with a man who can’t help himself, who goes out of control and hurts her?

” He draws a finger across his throat. “I’d tell her to leave that asshole. ”

Lotus swallows heavily.

“It’s not the same,” I say in a gravelly voice.

“But to some degree, it doesn’t matter,” says Striker, “because Lotus is still in the same amount of danger no matter what.”

No one says anything after that.

His words settle heavily into all of us.