26
lotus
WE END UP having to take a series of trains and buses all the way north, deep into New York State. When we get off the bus, Knight is there with Calix’s car. He tells us that Calix is back at this Polloi compound, which is another forty minute drive, and he’s securing Dr. Acker in some basement room.
“I didn’t get a chance to stay and see what was going on there. Calix sent me to go meet your bus right away,” says Knight. “And I see that look on your faces. Don’t bust my balls about going after Acker, all right?”
“We’re on the news,” says Arrow to him. “They keep posting pictures of us and we’ve been paranoid as fuck trying to get up here, thinking we’d be recognized at any moment. They’re making us sound like public enemy number one.”
“Sorry,” says Knight, but he doesn’t sound sorry.
Striker just glares at him.
Knight glares back. “Hey, I did this for you, okay? I know you think you want vengeance on that woman, but really, you should leave it to me. If I’d had my way, I would have been dropping pieces of her in several different deep holes right now.”
Striker shakes his head at him.
“Seriously,” says Knight. “This is probably the first and only selfless thing I’ve done in my entire life, and remind me not to ever do anything like that again, because you people are impossible to please.”
Despite myself, this makes me giggle.
Knight shrugs at me. “You all right, omega? I didn’t mean to put you in more danger.”
“Let’s just go,” I say.
So, we drive.
Arrow and Knight fight over the radio stations. Knight wants to listen to hip hop and Arrow favors classic rock. This goes on until I tell everyone to stop on the eighties station and everyone seems happy enough to make me happy.
I sit in the back with Striker while Arrow and Knight sit up front, no longer squabbling with each other.
We drive a long time.
Eventually, we pull onto a dirt road that stretches back between straggly pine trees. There are dips and furrows in the road, and it’s a bumpy ride. We go around bends and twists in the road. The further in we go, the more we begin to see things like old rusty cars with weeds growing up around them, stacks of cracked tires, tangles of bikes and plastic play houses, and even an old school bus which has been painted blue but is peeling.
This, I have to say, is sort of typical for what everyone pictures when they think of the Polloi. Abject poverty in the middle of nowhere. People who live in squalor, hoarding trash.
I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that Calix was going to take me here. I think of being abandoned in this sort of a place and it makes me feel a little panicked.
But I have to remind myself not to judge these people.
The Polloi have been oppressed, their way of life denigrated, their beliefs scoffed at. They’ve been thought of as “other,” as dirty and frightening, as dangerous and unhinged, as uncivilized.
I should try to keep an open mind.
I’m an omega, after all.
My ancestors were Polloi.
Eventually, we start to see tilting cabins made of mismatched pieces of wood, trailers up on cement blocks, and then a tall and sprawling building. The main part of it might have once been a farmhouse. It has a stately-looking porch on the front, complete with two wooden rocking chairs. But the house has been built onto numerous times, and none of the additions match the original house. There are three different kinds of siding on the place, bare wood squareish rooms sticking out, supported by rickety beams, even several different styles of chimneys.
As the car pulls to a stop, Calix comes out of the front door with a tall woman with long, wavy white hair. She’s old, but she’s regal. She’s wearing a patchwork skirt and a peasant blouse, and she moves ahead of Calix, walking towards us with her chin up.
The alphas get out of the car, and she barely looks at them.
She nods at me. “Welcome,” she says to me.
I look at Calix, who is looking at the woman.
Okay, right. I smile at her. “Thank you.”
She comes to me and offers me her hand. “I’m Penelope,” she says to me.
“Lotus,” I say, taking her hand in mine.
She shakes mine firmly, looking around at everyone. “Come along, then.” She turns and begins walking into the house.
I give Calix another look. Am I supposed to follow her?
He gestures meaningfully with his head.
So, I go after the woman.
She leads me inside and into a living room that looks like someone’s grandmother decorated it in 1982. There’s even dark wood paneling on the walls and some kind of hideous floral-patterned sofa.
She shuts the door on everyone else.
Just me and her inside.
Okay.
She sits down in a red plush easy chair and gestures for me to sit in another one, which flanks it, but doesn’t match. It’s red, but not the same color red. The effect is jarring and unpleasant.
I sit down.
“Well, I’m happy to see you’re doing better,” she says to me. “You are, aren’t you? Calix says you are.”
“I’m…” I swallow. “I mean, I’m not sure what he told you, I suppose.” I don’t even know what is going on. Why isn’t Calix in here? I don’t know these people, and I don’t know how to behave.
“He first approached me because he thought I could perhaps rehabilitate you,” she says. “We’ve had some good luck with omegas who end up in a bad way in the secular world, sad little things strung out on heroin, that sort of thing.”
“I’m not an addict,” I whisper.
“No offense,” she says with a shrug. “Typically, I wouldn’t allow an omega not of my bloodline in this place, not one attached to a pack, anyway. I told Calix that, and that I would have to speak to you first, to make sure it would be a good fit. He says that you’ll be respectful, that you’ll know your place.”
My lips part. I don’t know what to say to that.
“Calix is wayward,” she says. “He’s my sister’s grandson. Ran off and left his family, ruined a perfectly good match he had with an omega in Texas. Broke everyone’s heart. Then, he’s calling me on the phone, saying he has a scent match.” She snorts. “Is that what it is, then? You, secular little omega, scent matching to alphas? Really?”
“We don’t really know,” I say. “But Calix says that’s what it is, and there is something. It’s undeniable, whatever it is.”
She looks me over, assessing, expressionless. “I see.”
I can’t stand looking at her. Her gaze makes me want to squirm. I look down at my lap. I lace my fingers together nervously.
“So, will you be respectful?”
My gaze darts up. “Definitely.”
“Kyra,” she says.
I just blink at her.
“It’s a term of respect for a Vasilissa,” she says. “You address me as kyra. ‘Definitely, kyra .’”
Ah, okay, then. I force myself to smile. “Apologies, kyra. I wasn’t aware, kyra.”
She gives me a wry smile. “All right. You don’t have to put it on that thick.”
I wince.
She laughs. “So shy and demur, aren’t you? Is that what they do to omegas in the secular world? Why would you stand for it? Haven’t you always sensed it, the way everyone wishes to please you?”
I swallow, because, of course I have. It’s always kind of annoyed me, though. It makes me feel as if I’m a burden on other people, and I’d rather just be like everyone else. But now, for some reason, I sit up straight, copying her posture, squaring my shoulders, lifting my chin. I hold her gaze, like an equal. “We will be respectful, kyra. We do not know our place, but we will learn it. We have nowhere else to go. We would be grateful for your help.”
Her smile widens. “Ah, there she is. Maybe you’re an omega after all.”
Of course, I know that the Polloi are matriarchal. She expects me to be the decision-maker for my pack. Thus far, I’ve been anything but that. I’ve let the alphas decide everything. The responsibility settles into me in a way that feels frightening but right.
I lift my chin higher.
She spreads her hands. “What do you plan to do with that beta woman?”
“Kill her,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows.
“Unless you’d rather we didn’t, kyra. If you don’t wish to be involved in something like that—”
“I didn’t say that,” she says. “She’s not dead yet, however?”
I take a deep breath. “She did damage to some of my alphas. Not Calix, but the others. We hope—” I catch myself. “ I hope she can mitigate some of it. Reverse it, even. I’m not entirely sure. I need to, um, to question her, to find out what I can from her. I don’t like the hold she has on my mates.”
“Right,” says Penelope. “Well, we have her in the basement of the punishment house. I wouldn’t necessarily demand an omega stay out there. It’s far away from the main house, so it’s a bit of a hike for meals, but perhaps you’d rather cook for yourselves anyway? You might be glad of the privacy, since I see you’re not claimed.”
“Claimed?”
“No bites,” she says. “Or are they somewhere I can’t see?”
“No, they’re not,” I say, swallowing. “No bites.”
“That’ll want seeing to,” she says. “You don’t want to go too long like that. Makes an omega mad with the want.”
“Oh,” I say. “Is that why I…?” I shake my head. Should I ask this woman questions?
“Why you what?”
“Sometimes, I seem to need, erm, my alphas. It gets painful, physically painful, and it’s almost unbearable.”
“Physically painful, hmm?” She knits her brow together. “Interesting. I don’t know. We don’t know much about scent matches, I’m afraid. Hasn’t been one in a hundred years, as far as I know.”
Well, Calix said they were rare, the stuff of folklore.
“But anyway, I think it’s the best place for your pack. I would even prefer having you away from me and my daughters and granddaughters. The scent of an omega of another bloodline, it can create issues.”
Really?
“I don’t want you to take it as some kind of insult, that I’m not hosting you in my own home, feeding you at my table, that sort of thing.” She raises her eyebrows. “But I suppose you don’t know about those sort of insults, raised in the secular world as you were. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. You wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t,” I have to admit. “Anywhere we could stay would be most welcome. We don’t need any special treatment.”
“Good,” she says. “You stay out there, then, and see to your beta woman, get your bites, put your pack in order, take control of your damaged alphas, and then… well, then we’ll see what we do after that. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “ Kyra . I mean, thank you, kyra. We appreciate your hospitality and your help.”
She chuckles under her breath. “He throws over an heir apparent vasilissa for you, does he? Who understands men?”
I’m confused.
“Calix,” she says. “You’re pretty enough, I suppose, but you’re like some kind of frightened rabbit. How do you expect to command the obedience of four men, little omega?”
I wince again.
calix
WHEN LOTUS FINALLY comes out of the discussion with Vasilissa Penelope, I’m relieved, because I have forgotten way too much about living out here. It’s like some kind of traumatic brain wipe or something, and now I feel it all coming back like a habit I never wanted to remember.
The other alphas are clueless, and I have to tell them that we have to stand here, hands behind our backs, staring at the floor, and that we don’t speak unless spoken to, and we don’t look at women—any women, but especially not omegas.
You can get mauled to death for looking at someone’s omega. I’ve seen it happen.
But eventually Lotus is there, and Penelope says we’re all being relegated to the punishment house. This is a big compound. Penelope’s sisters still live here, which is kind of unheard of, really, for omegas of the same generation to handle being able to live in the same place with each other. A woman and her daughters, sure, and her granddaughters, but once the matriarch at the top kicks it and the new Vasilissa takes over, all her sisters usually take a hike, start their own compounds.
Anyway, because it’s so big, they have a whole punishment house, not just some room in the attic or something.
I want to ask what happens if someone needs disciplining, but I don’t, because you don’t ask questions of the Vasilissa. Men are to be fucked and not heard, that kind of thing. And men that belong to other women, men that you personally can’t fuck, well, you definitely aren’t interested in listening to their voices.
Anyway, I hope we don’t have people showing up and leaving people in the punishment house. Or, Goddess forbid, actually punishing them while we’re there.
I know where the house is, because I already chained Dr. Acker to the wall in the basement, leaving her a piss bucket and a water bottle. So, I take the lead and everyone follows me out there.
This is an old house, sturdy, with a basement and an upper level. There’s plumbing, which is nice, because not all punishment houses have anything besides outhouses. Electricity, too, but it looks like the heat and stove are attached to a natural gas tank.
Overall, this is really good. We could have done much worse. I was afraid she’d put us up in a guest nest in the main house and that everyone would be listening to us fuck.
Which we’re going to be due for soon, I think, if I’m scenting Lotus right. She’s nervous, and I think she’s going to need some intense tending.
In fact, as soon as we get into the house, she takes me by the hand, drags me into the bedroom, which has about five twin mattresses pushed together in a kind of Tetris pattern in the middle of the floor and a smattering of quilts and pillows. She looks at that, sighs, and drops to her knees in front of me.
I let out a little gasp of surprise.
“Talk to me. Tell me what the fuck is going on,” she says, undoing my zipper. She takes my cock out and pops it into her mouth, letting out a little moan of relief at the same time.
“Uh…” I blow out noisy air. “All the blood in my body rushed out of my head, omega,” I say weakly.
She comes off me. “Someone give me a cock to suck?”
The others are all there, freeing themselves.
She reaches out and tugs on them, pulling them by their dicks, pulling us all into a circle around her, and she moves from one to the other, not really giving head, just tucking each of us down into her mouth.
The others are all touching her hair, talking over each other, asking me questions.
I try to explain, but the air is swirling with our scents, worry on the back of my tongue, confusion and fear.
Abruptly, she stands up. She turns on me. “Where’s Dr. Acker?”
“Downstairs,” I say.
“Show me,” she says.
I take her to the door to the basement, but when I try to follow her down there, she shakes her head at me.
Instead, I watch her descend the steps into the darkness alone. At the bottom of the steps, there’s a light she flicks on, and it bathes the stone room down there in a yellowish light.
“Oh, it’s you,” says Dr. Acker. “Where are my boys?”
“Yours?” says Lotus, letting out a caustic laugh.
“What are you—?” Dr. Acker’s voice cuts off with the sound of a crack, skin on skin. Lotus has just struck the woman.
“If you want to keep your worthless life,” says Lotus in a lethal voice, “you better start thinking about what you can do to fix my alphas.”
“Who do you think you are?” scoffs Dr. Acker.
“I’m their omega,” says Lotus, and then she reappears at the bottom of the steps. She switches off the lights and comes back up to me. She reaches down to find my pulsing knot and she gives it a squeeze.
My mouth is dry. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this attracted to a woman in my life.
She moves past me. “Shut the door.”
I shut it.
The others are gathered around.
“Bites,” says Lotus.
“Now?” says Knight, looking eager.
“Look,” I say, “we just got here, and I don’t—”
“Now,” says Lotus, turning to look at me.
My scent unfurls in a wild rush as she takes charge like that.
Lotus walks past us, swinging her hips, tugging off her clothes and dropping them in her wake on her way to the bedroom. She glances at us over her shoulder. “I’m waiting,” she breathes.
* * *
Thanks so much for reading!