Page 24

striker

IT’S FUNNY HOW Calix didn’t consult with any of us before committing all of us to go back to Cedar Falls.

It’s one thing for him.

He worked there. We were kept there like dogs in cages.

The bond is shot full of confusion, worry, and anger as we all climb into the back of the van that used to transport us when we were the hounds. We’re not handcuffed, not anymore, though we were at one point.

Calix convinced us to submit to it through the bond.

Well, Calix convinced Lotus and she rammed it down all our throats. There is so much crazy going on right now. After what Lotus did to us when she made us bite her…

And now this?

I have enough power in the hierarchy to make my displeasure known, but not enough to override her. She’s the omega. I’m her lead alpha, but that doesn’t mean I can stop her from controlling me.

And this is just… I’m supposed to simply accept it?

How does anyone accept that?

But Calix is eloquent, and he talked and talked and he made this happen, and they took off our handcuffs and the police are releasing us to Coltrain’s custody, and they’re ready to forget the whole thing even happened.

Calix got his cell phone back and a promise to give all of us cell phones, a promise to give us all sorts of things. He got Coltrain to say that he’ll figure out a way to restore us to our lives. We don’t know yet, because we’ve all been declared dead, but Coltrain said he can make it happen.

All of this because Calix threatened him with media exposure?

How could we not have realized that was what we needed to do before?

On the other hand, I’m one of the few people who’s pushed us to look longterm. And for the most part, they’ve all pushed back because it’s been accurate to think that we needed to look to our own survival ahead of anything else.

But it’s galling to see how easily handled Cedar Falls is by simply threatening to tell everyone the truth.

If we’d done this earlier, would half of this happened?

Coltrain sits in the back of the van with us and any time any of us hounds speak, he looks startled, like he still can’t believe it.

“When did it start?” he says.

No one says anything.

The van is moving at this point. We’re all going back to Connecticut, for better or worse.

Can we trust Coltrain? After all, we know that Calix doesn’t have anyone who can leak information about Cedar Falls.

His threat—the one he’s using to pull Coltrain’s strings—it’s an elaborate bluff.

Based on the strength of that, we’ve just given ourselves up to this man?

On the other hand, I suppose it’s a little bit miraculous.

Through the bond, from Arrow, we can feel how incredulous he is that the police let us go after we killed two of their own. He isn’t sure how Coltrain could have possibly done it.

“When did what start?” says Calix.

“The talking,” says Coltrain. “Dr. Acker said that she was worried you could do it and were hiding it. That you were all just biding your time before you could leave. Was it like that?”

I glare at him. “We didn’t like it there. We did always want to escape. But no, we couldn’t communicate.”

Coltrain can’t meet my gaze. “So, when?”

Again, no one answers.

Coltrain spreads his hands. “Okay, look, I get it. You don’t like me.

You never liked Dr. Acker. But let me explain to you that while she may have had a vested interest in suppressing any of your ability to regain your mental capacity, I sure as hell didn’t.

You can’t imagine what a nightmare it was to discover that this rare side effect was happening sometimes to our clients.

You can’t think that I wanted anything except for it to be cured. ”

I regard him. Maybe that’s true. Maybe.

He meets my gaze. “Mr. Butler—er, do you prefer Father Nicholas?”

I snort, looking away.

“Well, whatever you want me to call you—”

“Striker’s fine.” I meet his gaze again.

He flinches. “We fucked you up, okay, I get it.” He groans. “I do want to fix it. Can you believe that?”

No one says anything.

Coltrain sighs.

And we drive.

Maybe ten minutes later, Coltrain tries again. “I don’t see how I’m going to figure out how to help you or the other alphas and omegas with brain damage if you don’t tell me what happened or how it got better.”

“How about you tell us a few things first,” says Calix. “Establish some trust.”

“Oh, you got me by the balls, you know that?” Coltrain sighs.

“You have no idea how hard it was to get you free of those cops. They were out for blood. And I… the first thing they did was show me Debbie’s body.

The back of her skull was matted blood. She was just…

bludgeoned. Whoever did that just kept at it after she was already dead. So…”

“Yeah, but you get that, right?” says Calix tightly. “Because you know what she did.”

“Some of it,” says Coltrain. “Acker kept things from me, though.”

“Were you fucking her?” says Calix.

Coltrain groans.

“I think that’s a yes,” speaks up Lotus softly. “Is that why you let her do what she did to my mates? To the men I love? Is that why? Because you were pussy whipped?”

Coltrain scratches the back of his head.

“Okay, first of all, it was a long time ago, and it was, um, not like you’re thinking, exactly.

It was only once, and then she just brought it up all the time.

Like, ‘Digger, you remember when you first hired me, and I was twenty-four and you were thirty-eight and you slept with me.’ Like that.

I mean, it doesn’t matter that she got me drunk or that she initiated and I’m not even accusing her of doing it in order to manipulate me.

I don’t know if that’s why it happened. I don’t know.

But she sure as fuck took advantage of that.

And she didn’t…” He looks at me and then at Arrow and then settles on Knight.

“A lot of women wouldn’t have taken so enthusiastically to sexually manipulating subjects who were experiencing developmental damage.

She sure as fuck didn’t mind doing what she did to you. ”

“So, it was all Acker’s fault,” says Calix softly, his voice a little sarcastic.

“No,” says Coltrain. “I did sleep with her, didn’t I?

And when she started going off the rails, when she kept getting more and more unorthodox, I let her manipulate me.

But I don’t think it would have held up if she’d tried to accuse me.

She was consenting. It was once. I think I could have proved she was using it against me.

But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want my wife to find out.

And anyway, it’s not as if Acker started the program. ”

“Who started the program?” says Knight. “You?”

“It was my idea, and I lobbied to be in charge of it,” says Coltrain.

“And for years, before Acker arrived, I tried everything I could think of to get results, and I got nothing. She, however, got the alphas to be much more intelligent and much more focused and useful than anything I’d done.

So, anyway, what brought back your ability to speak and to understand words? ”

“We could understand you for a long time,” I say.

“Yeah, we suspected that,” says Coltrain. “But we don’t know how she did it.”

“An injection,” says Arrow.

“When?” says Coltrain.

“We still don’t know how long we were in there,” I say.

“I could have told you that,” says Calix. “Sorry. I don’t know how we never talked about it. But I had access to your files.”

“Anyway,” says Knight, “we sure as fuck didn’t know how much time had passed in Cedar Falls. It’s not like you gave us calendars.”

“Fine, fine,” says Coltrain. “But you couldn’t talk until what?”

“Until her,” I say.

Coltrain fixes his gaze on Lotus. “Your omega.”

“And I started to understand words right after I scented Calix,” say Lotus.

Coltrain looks at Calix. “Because this is some mystical scent magic? That’s what you’re trying to pedal to me? Scent magic fixed your brains?”

“Sort of,” says Calix. “I have this theory that whatever your drugs do, it’s similar to a bite frenzy, which is when people go feral.

There are times when alphas and omegas go feral in the Polloi, and it’s almost always solved by the hierarchy of the pack, like someone higher ranked than you brings you back together.

Our scent match sorted them, pulled them back from the feral edge.

But not everyone has a scent match. They’re rare.

So, we need something else for the other alphas and omegas in the basement of Cedar Falls. ”

Coltrain is quiet. Then he turns away, looking off into the distance. “Feral,” he murmurs. “Huh.”

lotus

I REMEMBER THE last time I was in one of these suites.

Well, I didn’t have a suite. I had just a room when I checked into Cedar Falls for my heat when I was twenty-one years old.

This time, we have a suite, with a huge, huge bed that will fit all of us, I think.

It’s meant for someone who’s paid for five or six caregivers.

I wonder about that, about what happened to me in that room where I was in before. I went into heat, and I came here and paid for some random people to have sex with me, and I was given an injection so that I wouldn’t remember any of it.

It wasn’t until after my heat faded that they realized something was wrong with me, because the heat was done, but I was still behaving erratically.

Coltrain personally brings us in here and tries to do what he can to make us comfortable, but everyone is cold with him and eventually, he leaves.

Then, we are alone, and I don’t know what to do.

I feel it through the bond, all of them, the way they are processing what I did to them after I killed Acker, the way I forced them to fuck me and each other for days, and I know they can feel my shame and disgust through the bond.

That wasn’t me. That was… Vasilissa Lotus.

Except she’s in me, I suppose. I would have sworn up and down that there was nothing like that in me.

I used them.

I made them get me off.

I forced them to fuck each other.

Is that… did I use the bond to rape them?

“No,” says Calix firmly. “You’re our omega, okay? Don’t push things like that into the bond. Too ugly to even consider, baby girl.”

I want to be reassured.

But even as his words are reassuring, I don’t sense the same feeling through the bond with him. And the others are even more wary.

“I’m fine,” says Knight. “It was not unpleasant. None of us minded. But, uh, it was…”

“Don’t do it again,” says Arrow quietly.

“I won’t,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I swear I won’t. You guys have to understand that I didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t a choice to kill Acker either. She just took me over, that other part of myself. It was my omega. She’s strong .”

Nothing from the others.

I turn away from them, surveying the big bed here, putting my back to the kitchen area of the suite, to the living room area as well. I gaze into the bed, shaking my head.

Striker’s voice, behind me, and the bond lights up as well. “We were taken over too, and we almost killed you, Lotus.”

“But I didn’t let you guys eat,” I say.

“So, we’re all even,” he says. “Let’s not worry about it anymore.” This pushes into the bond like a command, and it sinks into me and I feel better.

“Don’t do that shit,” sneers Arrow. “That’s the same fucking shit, Striker.”

“I’m not trying to do that,” says Striker. “We all know the bond just does that. Our emotions, they travel to each other.”

“Okay,” says Arrow, and suddenly, we’re all feeling Arrow in the bond, and Arrow is certain that he wants neither Striker nor me to ever take control of him, ever again.

But it doesn’t feel the same.

“See?” says Arrow. “There’s a big fucking difference if you do it, Striker, even if you don’t mean it.”

“Because he’s lead,” says Calix, nodding.

I sit down on the bed, clutching my hands around my head, elbows pressed together in front of me. “We can’t control it,” I breathe.

And everyone’s quiet, because we feel the truth of that and no one can deny it, and Calix has all the evidence of growing up in the Polloi to know it’s the truth.

The instinctive part of our designations is wild and untamed.

It’s not as if we can never control it, but sometimes, it takes over and when it does, we’re just along for the ride.

The suite is stocked with food, and not just food we can cook for ourselves, but premade dishes that can be heated easily in the microwave.

We eat.

We all take turns in the two showers, because there are two bathrooms in this suite.

We put on the provided Cedar-Falls-issue pajamas, which are soft and gray and nondescript.

We don’t all sleep together.

I sleep in the big bed and Calix and Striker sleep there, too, but we sleep far apart, none of us touching.

Arrow and Knight sleep on furniture in the living area—the couch and the recliner.

When I wake up, it’s still dark outside, but I feel antsy. My pajamas are too tight and too scratchy, and I go into the bathroom and shed them and take a long, hot shower.

My body shivers and crests in the shower, and I know before it’s over what is going on with me, but I just don’t want to face it.

No.

Not when we have just gotten free of being overtaken by sexual control that went on and on.

Not when I did whatever I did to them, even if they say it wasn’t rape, and even if—whatever it was—was happening to me, too, like it took over me and used my body to rape them and that somehow raped me, too. Even if it’s not really my own fault.

I can’t.

Not again.

But.

As I climb out of the shower, shuddering against the towel, my teeth chattering, I know it.

I’m going into heat.