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striker

“SHOULD I BE worried about Knight having disappeared?” Lotus is saying as she comes up the stairs from the basement.

“He’s fine,” says Arrow. “I can feel him in the bond. He doesn’t want us to interfere.”

“Oh, does that mean we shouldn’t interfere, though?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “This is Knight we’re talking about.”

Lotus taps her lower lip. “Good point. Arrow, can you take us to where he is?”

“All of us?” I say. “We can’t leave Acker here entirely alone.”

Lotus makes a face. “Right,” she says.

“Arrow, go and bring him back here,” I say. “Whatever he’s trying to do, he can tell us about it before he does it, right?” I turn to Lotus for backup.

She shrugs. “That makes sense to me. Arrow, bring him back.”

Arrow spreads his hands. “And what if he doesn’t come?”

“Well, he has to,” I snap.

Arrow draws back. “You’re in a mood, man.”

Lotus puts a hand on my shoulder. “You need to calm down, don’t you? When was the last time you emptied your balls?”

I turn to her, mouth dropping open. “You didn’t just say that?”

“Well, it’s not fair,” she says. “We all had sex recently, but you didn’t. You and I will go to the nest. Arrow will go get Knight. And—”

“I want to talk to you,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “We can talk and fuck.”

I think that through and decide I can find absolutely nothing wrong with her logic, actually. It sounds like a relief, if I’m honest. Am I in a bad mood because I haven’t gotten off lately?

Lotus tugs me into the room, pushes me down on the mattresses, and climbs on top of me. She helps me remove my shirt, runs her hands over my chest, and then unbuttons my pants.

I shut my eyes and sigh, feeling even more relaxed.

She takes me out, fists me as my knot begins to expand, and begins to gently jerk my erection. “There you are, Striker,” she breathes. “Look at your big, beautiful cock.”

I grunt. “Uh, about talking, though…”

She continues to jerk me. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I just… I think…” Oh, yeah, this is going to be really hard to concentrate.

I’m going to have to choose between my erection and communicating about this.

I decide I can make it quick. I’ll just explain myself to her really fast, and then she can get me hard again.

So, I concentrate on what I wanted to say, not on my pleasure. “It’s about Acker.”

“Acker?” She’s still playing with me.

Okay, I’m still hard. “Yeah, I don’t think we should kill her,” I say.

“I don’t want to kill her,” she says, rubbing her thumb over the sensitive part of my cock, right behind the head.

“I don’t either,” I say, my voice growing thick. “Which is why I think we should do something else.”

“Like…”

“I don’t know exactly,” I say, “but I think the biggest problem is if she would tell anyone about us, right? So, what if we could make it so she couldn’t do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, exactly,” I say. “But it would be poetic if she was stripped of her personality. If we returned her intact, but—you know—brain damaged.”

She considers. “That is poetic.”

“But I don’t know how to do that to someone,” I say.

“I wonder if Calix has access to anything at Cedar Falls that would work,” she says. “We should ask him.”

“That’s a good idea,” I say, grinning. Okay, well, this problem seems entirely solved. Also, the way she’s touching me is amazing. I shut my eyes.

She giggles. “You smell so good right now, Striker.”

I chuckle. “You were right about needing a little release, I think. I could be close.”

“Where do you want to come?” she says in a little coquettish voice. “You want to be inside me? Or in my mouth? Or come all over me?”

“I don’t even care,” I say. “What about you, sweet thing? Should take care of you first.”

“No, you first,” she says, stroking me. “This is about you.”

“Well, then, at least, you decide where you want me to come,” I say, sighing in happiness. “I’m just lucky that you’re touching my dick, beautiful.”

She giggles. “I want to taste you, Striker.”

I groan. Fuck, how did this even happen to me? How did I ever get this woman? She’s so amazing. I’m a very lucky man. “That’s so hot, you know that?”

She’s rearranging herself so that she can get me in her mouth. “I love the way you taste, Striker,” she says as she licks around the head of me.

I gasp.

“All of my alphas taste a little different, but all of your tastes are ones I want to savor,” she says. “I want you to spill yourself all over my tongue, baby, all over my throat. Can you do that for me?”

“Uh, fuck,” I pant.

She sucks the head of me and then comes off. “Answer me, alpha, can you paint my throat with your come, baby?”

“I can,” I whisper. I really, really want to.

She takes me into her mouth again.

Oh, hell, I’m not going to last very long at all. She takes me all the way into her mouth, practically swallowing the head of me, and then she eases up just to lick the head of me, and then she goes back down again, lips to my knot.

I come with a shout, unable to stop myself. She feels too fucking good.

She takes her time swallowing me as I pump into her mouth.

She licks me over, getting every last drop of me.

Then she crawls up to snuggle with me and I kiss her, tasting myself on her tongue. She’s mine. My omega.

arrow

I FIND KNIGHT crouching in the woods near a little pond. He’s watching some old guy set up a chess board on a table overlooking the pond.

“Lotus wants you to come back,” I say to him.

He doesn’t look at me. “I know.”

“You know?”

“I could feel it from you,” he says. “It’s weird, because it’s not like I can read your thoughts, right? Just that I get this sense when you have a strong motivation of some kind or other. Are you getting the same thing from me?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I am. I knew you were doing something and you didn’t want to be dissuaded from it.”

“This thing with us, it’s, uh…” He blows out a noisy huff of air. “Anyway, that’s why I’m going to talk to this guy. To hopefully find something out.”

“So, what? You’re just ignoring the fact that our omega wants you to come home?”

“I am,” he says. “But it’s for a good reason.”

“Can you even do that?” I say. “How can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s not like we have to do what the others order us to do, at least not always. This is why we need more information. I’m going to go play chess with that guy.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he says, and then he gets up and walks away from where I’m crouched in the woods.

I consider going after him, trying to argue with him, but I get a sense through the bond that he’s not going to bend on this, and I sense it would be futile.

So, I just stay where I am, and I watch.

I finger the bite mark on my neck and I watch him shiver as I do it.

I don’t even know what I think about it.

There hasn’t been time to think, not since we left the facility, really, but since we left my family’s house in New Jersey, things have been moving really quickly.

Having Acker in our basement is a big problem.

Having her be able to make us attack Lotus—twice—is horrifying.

Knowing that I almost attacked her on my own, just because I started thinking about her blood makes me feel entirely unstable.

I had thought that Knight’s bite would steady me, but it didn’t do a damned thing when Acker triggered us last night.

Now, I wonder why I’m thinking about this instead of watching Knight with this guy. I wonder why I didn’t ask who the hell this guy even was or why he’s playing chess or what Knight is doing here.

The hell of it is, I used to be a police detective.

I was good with details.

What’s going on with me?

More and more, it feels like that life belonged to someone else and that I’m not even that guy anymore.

Which begs the question, who the hell am I, then?

The old man is seated at a small table still rooting around in a wooden box to set up the chess pieces on the table. He is working on the black pieces first, though he has already put the white queen in place. He catches sight of Knight and he looks up at him, his expression curious.

Knight raises a hand. “Hey there. I hear you’re the man to find if someone wants to play chess. Theodorus?”

The old man chuckles. “That’s me, all right. You must be one of those alphas that Penelope let in, hmm? I’ve never seen you before.”

“That’s right,” says Knight. “Name’s Knight.”

“Unclaimed,” says the old man, sniffing the air. “That doesn’t seem too wise on the part of your omega.”

“We’re, uh, working on it,” says Knight. “We don’t know anything about any of it, you know? We didn’t grow up learning about it. Out there, in our world, everyone just wants to suppress everything about us that makes us different.”

“Sure,” says Theodorus. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

“So, can I play?”

“You any good?”

Knight shrugs. “You know, to be honest, I barely remember how to play. But it’s boring here. No TV, no cell phones, nothing like that. It’s, uh, I’ll get better if you give me a chance.”

Theodorus laughs. “Fine, boy. You’re lucky I’m hard-up for chess partners. Sit down.”

Knight sits down.

Theodorus begins handing him white pieces.

Knight sets them up and only makes a few mistakes, which Theodorus corrects.

“So, why haven’t you bitten your omega?” he says to Knight.

“Well, we have some issues,” he says. “We keep getting violent every time we get close. She’s got one bite, but the other three of us are having trouble with it.”

“Violent?” says Theodorus. “Truly? Against each other, you mean?”

“No, against her,” says Knight.

“Against your omega?” Theodorus is aghast.

“I told you… issues,” mutters Knight.

“But you smell…” Theodorus tilts his head. “I heard it was a scent match.”