Chapter 13 #2
That's the part I can't stop looking at. His eyes are shut and his hand is flat on the table and he is standing absolutely still, and I have never once in my life watched this man take a hit and stay down in it this long.
"To who," he says.
"Does it matter?"
My father’s jaw is clenched so tight I think it’s going to snap. "To who, Starla."
"A man who paid." Ice against glass again. "I had Sonny’s scent profile sent to him and the deal was done over a month ago. He'll collect when it suits him."
"You…” Father swallows, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “You sold your own son?"
"I placed him." First bit of effort in her voice all night. "He'd have died in a walkup at thirty. I'm the only person alive who ever made a plan for that boy."
I look at my father. His hand on the table is shaking.
"And if this is still about the money, I'd let that go too," Starla says.
"Most of it walked out in one box off your dresser.
The stones in that ring alone will keep me six months" Ice against glass.
"There was a pile of junk in the bottom of it—hospital bracelets, bit of baby hair taped to a card, that sort of thing.
I tipped all that out in the drive before I left.
If it matters to you it's probably still lying—"
Killian tears up the stairs in a flash.
I don't see him move until it’s too late. My hand closes on air but he's already taking the stairs four at a time. Father says his name once, hard, but Kill doesn’t even flinch.
A door comes open upstairs, and the sound Sonny makes after that makes my heart lurch.
“Kill!” I shout but my brother is already on his way back.
Killian drags Sonny down the stairs by the hair. One fist wound in his curly blond locks at the crown. Sonny’s hands circle around Kill’s wrist and his feet barely catch the treads–that terrified noise coming out of him, thin and high, on every breath.
He's in my clothes like I’ve gotten used to—my grey shirt, black at the collar with sweat, stuck to him. His face is scarlet. His hair is soaked at the temples. I'm six feet away and I can feel the heat coming off his body like off a stove.
They get to the bottom of the stairs and Killian puts him on his knees on the boards next to the phone.
"You want to hear this?" Not to Sonny. To the table. He twists his fist and Sonny's back arches and the sound goes up and cracks in the middle, and my brother's voice comes out almost pleasant. "Say hi to your mother, Sonny."
I move to stop Killian.
I get one step.
My father's hand comes up.
Flat. Palm out.
My body stops before I get a vote in it.
And then, with my brother's fist wound in Sonny's hair, I understand.
He wants to see if Killian’s plan works.
"Starla." Killian's breathing hard. "You hearing this?"
He twists his hand. Sonny's whole body comes up off his heels and the sound tears out of him, higher than before, and it goes on too long.
I have to lock my knees to keep from tackling my brother to the floor.
Sonny settles, gasping for air as Killian holds him up taut.
The line's quiet. One second. Two.
"I'm hearing it."
"You want me to keep going?"
"I want you to do whatever it is you're going to do." Starla say. Bored. Genuinely, entirely bored. "You've got a temper and I've got a life. If it makes you feel like a man, go ahead."
Sonny's hands come off Killian's wrist.
They just open and drop and hang there at his sides. His chest is going fast and shallow and his eyes are streaming and he isn't looking at any of the three of us—he's looking at three inches of black glass on the table with his mother's voice coming out of it.
I've seen a face do that exactly once before. Killian’s–the day somebody finally told him how our mother died.
That's what I'm looking at.
Horror and grief so terrible you can’t fight it.
Killian hauls Sonny around by the hair and forces his chin up. My brother's other hand is already back and fisted. By the look on his face, he's going to beat Sonny to death on my father's floor.
"Look at me." His voice is in pieces. "You know why I’m doing this?"
Sonny nods.
Slow. Once. His chin dragging against Killian’s grip. Then he shuts his eyes and lets out a long breath and his shoulders come down, all the way down, like a man setting something heavy on the ground.
No, I think. No—
Killian's arm cocks.
But Sonny folds in on himself.
He moans.
It's low and wet and needy, dragged up out of his belly. It doesn't sound like a man dying. It sounds like a man wanting.
He rolls onto his side on the boards. Not clutching his chest. Lower—both arms locked hard across his hips, knees hauled up to meet them. He's shaking so hard I can hear his teeth chattering, and then he whines through them, high and thin, and every hair on my arms stands up.
What the fuck is happening?
And the room goes white.
The scent that came down the stairs before was nothing. The scent rolling off him now is like a punch to my chest. It takes the strength out of my legs. I hear my father snarl and then everything happens at the same time.
The phone goes dead under his palm.
Killian reaches for Sonny.
Not to hit him. He gets a knee between the kid's legs and both hands under his hips and hauls him up off the boards, and his face goes straight into Sonny's neck.
Straight to the source of the scent.
And my father hits my brother at a dead run and takes him off Sonny and into the wall so hard the pictures come down.
Killian isn't fighting to get loose. He's fighting to get back to Sonny—both arms out toward the floor, teeth bared, dragging my father's whole weight two feet across the boards before Dad gets a forearm across his throat and drives him down.
"CALDER."
My legs don't work.
"Calder!” My father shouts at me. His head whips around. His eyes are black all the way out. "Take him upstairs. Now. Lock the door and don't open it for anybody in this house. Not your brother. Not me."
I'm already crouching. Sonny's curled between my boots, burning through my shirt, making small ruined sounds into the floor.
"What's wrong with him?" It doesn't come out right. "Dad. What do I do?"
Killian gets a knee up, but father takes it and doesn't let go, and for a second I see something on his face I can't figure out.
It isn’t anger.
It’s something like sadness.
"Do what Sonny asks you," he says. "Son. Do what he asks."
I get my arms under Sonny and lift.
He weighs nothing. Less than a bag of feed off the back of the truck. He's furnace-hot through the cotton. His head rolls until his face is pressed against my neck, his breath tickling my skin. He whimpers as I grip him tighter, and his fingers close in the front of my shirt and lock.
“I got you,” I whisper.
Behind me my brother is screaming.
I take the stairs as fast as I can. Sonny's moving against my chest, not fighting, the exact opposite of fighting, his face pushed up under my jaw and his breath coming scalding off my throat, and he's saying something into my skin that I can't make out and don't think I want to.
Halfway up he drags in a breath right at my collar and moans.
I stop walking. Everything… all of it finally sinks in.
Sonny is an omega.
That's what's been coming through his door since this morning.
That's what's had my brother wearing a track in the boards and my father hanging onto a doorframe he might fall over.
I told myself it couldn't be. They're rare—I've met two in my life and one of them was my mother, and I don't remember her.
This kid just fell into our lap because of his con-artist mother?
But I'm holding him, and there's no getting around it now. He's an omega. And he's in heat.
Do what he asks.
Sonny shudders and says my name into my throat—cracked, small, Calder—and every good intention I've ever had burns away until I can’t think straight.