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And while this is really great that this happened, I feel like we still don’t have any answers. We don’t know why the drugs that are given at Cedar Falls sometimes make omegas and alphas feral. We don’t know what the effect of this prolonged ferality is, either.

To me, it doesn’t seem like this omega has a potent and powerful scent the way that Lotus does, but I don’t know if Lotus’s scent is related to our scent match.

One thing that is true, though, is that the alpha has teeth like ours, the big fang-like alpha incisors.

So, it stands to reason that the effects may be very similar.

I want to bring Kyvelki in to scent the new omega. Coltrain refuses to allow this.

There’s a week full of stress and tension and a lot of confusion about what I should do and whether we should go public, even though we’ve signed non-disclosures with Cedar Falls and its parent corporation.

We meet with a lawyer to find out what the consequences would be if we break that legal document.

And then, while we’re all debating that, the omega and the alpha escape the facility, go home, contact the press, and it just blows up.

Cedar Falls’ corporate owners sweep in real fast, offer a bunch of law settlements, shut down the entire facility, and they come in and want to talk to me. After a few conversations, they put me in charge.

I float an idea that we pair up the alphas and omegas in heat while having guards standing by with stun guns to stop the alphas from doing any permanent damage to the omegas and that we muzzle them so that they can’t bite.

That’s what we do.

The brain damage is reversed and they aren’t bonded, and immediately when they come back to themselves, the corporation offers them huge cash settlements in exchange for never talking about it and not pressing any charges.

Every single one of them takes it, even the original mated pair who blew the whistle on everything to begin with.

I wait for some sign that these alphas are going to be “triggered” like my mates were.

But they aren’t. I have to admit, the last time my mates were triggered, it was before Lotus’s first heat.

She stopped it, reined them back in, but it hasn’t really happened again since her heat.

Maybe the heat restores some kind of pack hierarchy that limits the ferality? I hope that’s the case.

Coltrain himself gets “reassigned.” He keeps his pension and his big house and keeps sending his kids to expensive private colleges. I think he maybe gets a very nasty scolding from the corporation, but… basically, it’s a slap on the wrist, no real consequences.

So, it feels like, two minutes after it blows up, it just blows over.

Nothing’s changed.

Drugs like the ones given out at Cedar Falls are being given out at facilities all over the country, and the wave of current regulatory bodies in government is tending towards less regulation, not more.

No one’s going to step in and stop this very profitable business that works by selling omegas and alphas a little story that they can be just like betas.

After all, who wants to be a freak?

I can’t blame them.

One night, I curl up with Lotus in the living room in our apartment, which is still being paid for by the corporation that owns Cedar Falls, after all, and I lay my head in her lap, and I say, “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t an alpha.”

She brushes her soft fingers through my hair and says, “I’m glad you’re an alpha.”

I shut my eyes.

“What did the job offer look like?” she says.

My eyes are still closed. “They want to close down Cedar Falls as a facility for profit and turn it into nothing more than a research facility. They say it’ll all be volunteers.

They say they want very scientific, double-blind studies with all sorts of controls and they want me to stay on in an advisory capacity.

Basically, it’ll be my job to make sure that everything they do is ethical.

I’ll be the person who makes sure the test subjects are protected and that we don’t violate their rights. ”

“You don’t have to take it,” she says. “We don’t have to keep relying on them for money. We can get, you know, real jobs.”

I laugh softly. “Oh, come on, you and Arrow are right in the thick of doing all that activism work, going out and doing speaking gigs to tell betas about how to accept and accommodate alphas and omegas. It’s good that you guys are doing that.

And it’s good to use the money from Cedar Falls to do good. ”

“Yeah, maybe,” she says. “But I wonder if that’s not just an excuse to take blood money.”

I sigh. I don’t answer.

I remember this security guard who I talked to when I was looking for my mates right after they escaped.

He talked about how he kept his job at Cedar Falls because if he left, Cedar Falls would keep doing whatever they were doing, but if he stayed, he had the ability to make small changes from within.

That guy’s still there.

I see him in the halls sometimes.

He used to offer me cigarettes, because that time I talked to him, I pretended to be out there because I smoked.

I had to lie and say I quit. It got to be a big thing, and I had to tell him I used nicotine patches and he was real curious, saying he tried it with the gum and it never worked for him, and…

Anyway.

Real life isn’t always about easy black-and-white choices.

“I’m going to take it,” I say. “We could use the health insurance, right? In case Knight fucks with your birth control again, this time successfully.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’m not getting younger. Neither are you. Neither are our mates. We should do that, soon, I think. We should start seriously thinking about getting pregnant.”

I think about whether or not we should bring a child into a world like this, one as flawed as this one is, and I know the answer. Yes. We can’t stop living and loving because the world is a bad world. We have to find the light in the darkness wherever we can.

Our pack is my light.

Our love.

I think it, and I feel the bond surge, lighting up my connection to each of our mates.

Then, one by one, they start to filter into the room.

“So,” says Knight, “what are we doing? Armed insurrection? I looked up the dude who owns the big corporation. I don’t mind kidnapping him. Having a talk with him with my fists. Or with knives, if necessary. I’m flexible.”

“Calix is taking the job,” says Lotus, still brushing at my hair. I’m still lying in her lap.

“Well, I’m in full support,” says Striker, sitting down next to us. “I think we can do some good from within. It’s a long fight. This is just one battle.”

“They’re lifting the gag order,” I tell Striker. “You can talk about Cedar Falls on TikTok if you want.”

“Really?” says Striker. “That’s interesting.”

“I think they’re going hard for their official position, which is that they had no idea what was going on there, and they were horrified to find out, and now they’re fixing everything.” I’m sarcastic.

“It’s still good news,” says Arrow. “I don’t know, you guys. Maybe we’re still going to be the prophesied superhero scent-match pack who leads the revolution.”

“Well,” I say with a little laugh, “if that’s the will of the Goddess, who are we not to answer the call?”

* * *

Thanks so much for reading!