Wow. He was so rattled, he was talking about the weather with himself.

He put his duffel down on the pavement at the curb.

He supposed he should text Blay now to see if he could, in fact, get picked up. Dematerializing with the weight of his duffel could be tricky and he’d never been given a car, so there you had it. He was going nowhere fast.

Just as he reached for his phone, the thing went off. It was a text from Blay: U gotta come stay w us. Let me pick u up.

He started to text his boy back, but then thought about the envelope and stopped. Putting the phone in his duffel, he slung the bag full of his shit back on his shoulder and started walking along the side of the road. He headed east, because with the way the road went, the random choice to go left took him in that direction.

Man… now he really was an orphan. It was like his inner suspicions had come true. He’d always thought he was adopted or some shit, because he’d never fit in with his family-and not just because of the whole mismatched-eyeball thing. He was cut from different cloth. Always had been.

Part of him wanted to get all fired up angry at getting kicked out of the house, but what did he expect? He’d never been one of them, and taking down his first cousin with a hunting knife, even if he’d been totally justified, was unforgivable.

It was also going to cost his pops big green.

In cases of assault-or murder, if Lash died-if the victim was a member of the glymera, they or their bloodline were due a sum, depending on the relative worth of the injured or dead. A young, posttransition male who was the first son of one of the founding families? Only the death of a Brother or a pregnant noble female would be more expensive. And his parents were the payors, not Qhuinn, as legally you weren’t considered an adult until one full year after your transition.

The good thing, he supposed, was that as he was still technically a minor, he wouldn’t be sentenced to death. But even so, he was definitely going to be charged, and life as he knew it was now officially gone.

Talk about your makeovers. He was out of the glymera. Out of his family. Out of the training program.

Short of getting a botched sex change, it was hard to imagine what more could be done to shit on his identity.

As it stood now, he had until dawn to decide where he would go to wait to hear what was going to happen to him. Blay’s would be the obvious choice, except for one big, fat, hairy problem: Sheltering an outcast from the glymera would totally H-bomb that family’s social status, so that was a no-go. And John couldn’t take him in either. The guy lived with the Brothers, and that meant his residence was so top-secret he couldn’t have visitors, much less semipermanent overnight guests.

Who’d slaughtered a fellow trainee. And were waiting for their orange jumpsuit.

God… John. That shit that Lash had said.

He hoped it wasn’t true, but feared it was.

He’d always assumed John hung back from the females because he was even more socially awkward than Blay was. Now? Obviously the guy had serious issues… and Qhuinn felt like an asshole of nightmarish proportions for riding his buddy about sex like he had.

No wonder John had never wanted to take a female to the back when they were hanging at ZeroSum.

Fucking Lash.

Man, no matter what happened as a result of what he’d done with that knife, he wouldn’t change a thing. Lash had always been a bastard, and Qhuinn had spent years wanting to pop the fucker in the piehole. But for jumping on John like that? He really hoped the kid died.

And not just because one less cruel bastard in the world was a good thing.

The reality was, Lash had a big mouth, and as long as he was breathing that information John was not secure. And that was dangerous. There were those in the glymera who would regard shit like that as totally emasculating. If John ever hoped to become a full Brother and be respected in the aristocracy, if he ever hoped to get mated and have a family, no one could know that he’d been violated by any male, much less a human male.

Shit, the fact that it had been a human made it all astronomically worse. In the glymera’s eyes, humans were rats that walked upright. To be overpowered by one of them? Untenable.

No, Qhuinn thought as he walked alone, he wouldn’t change a thing about what he’d done.

Chapter Fifteen

After john cleaned up the locker room’s shower area, he went into the office, sat at the desk, and spent God only knew how long staring at papers and spent God only knew how long staring at papers he should have been shuffling. In the silence, his fat lip throbbed and so did his knuckles, but those were just minor aches in the midst of the dull roar in his head.

Life was just too fucking weird.

The vast majority of it passed at a predictable rate, events flowing by you at or just below the speed limit. Every once in a while, though, things happened in a flash, kind of like a Porsche sucking your doors off on the highway. Shit just came from out of nowhere and changed everything in a heartbeat.

Wellsie’s death had been like that. Tohr’s disappearance had been like that.

Qhuinn’s move on Lash had been like that.

And the horrible thing that had happened to John on the stairwell… yeah, that, too.

It was fate’s version of a lead foot.

Clearly Lash’s throat had been destined to be cut at that moment by Qhuinn, and time had sped up so that there could be no interference by anyone or anything else.

Giving up on the paperwork, John left the desk and headed through the back of the closet. As he stepped into the underground tunnel that would take him back to the mansion, he hated himself for hoping that Lash didn’t survive. He didn’t like thinking he was that cruel, and besides, if Lash died, things would be harder on Qhuinn.

He didn’t want his secret to get loose, though.

As he stepped out into the foyer, his phone went off with a beep. It was Qhuinn: Hav left home. Dont kno hw long fone will work. Will turn self in2 Wrath wheneva he wants.

Shit. John quickly hit his friend back: Blay’s ready 2 cum amp; pick u up.

No reply.

He tried again: Q? W8 4 Blay, don’t leave w/o him. U can stay thur.

John stopped at the base of the stairs and waited for an answer. What he got a minute later was from Blay: Dont worry, im on Q. Will let u kno wen i hear bck frm him. Worst case? I pick him up.

Thank fuck.

Ordinarily, John would have gone over and met his boys at Blay’s, but he couldn’t face them just yet. How could they not be thinking about him differently? Plus, what had happened to him was going to be tight on their minds, just as it had been for him in the beginning.

After the attack had first occurred, he’d thought nonstop about what had been done to him. Then it had been most of the time during the day and all the time during the night. And then it was sometimes during the day, then every other day; then a whole week might pass without him giving it a thought. The nights had taken much, much longer, but eventually even the dreams had dried up, too.

Yeah, he had zero interest in looking into his friends’ eyes right now and knowing what they were thinking. Picturing. Wondering about.

Nah, he couldn’t be with them yet.

And besides, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing with Lash was his fault. If he wasn’t carrying that baggage around with him, the guy wouldn’t have trotted it out in front of his friends and the fight wouldn’t have happened and Qhuinn wouldn’t have Rambo’d his first cousin.

Once again, that fucked-up shit from that stairwell was causing problems. It was like the aftershocks from what had happened to him were never, ever going to end.