Thirteen
THIRTEEN
Emiel
IT WAS WAY TOO late in the day for this, and I was out of patience. I sat in a conference room at the Hope Project with Zalen, trying to decide if the woman across the table from us was stupid, evil, or both.
Tony, the kid Zalen and I were trying to help, wasn’t here for our interview with his mother. The way things were going, that was just as well. After only a few minutes of dealing with her, my blood pressure was already through the roof.
She was very Italian, very Catholic, and very obviously trying to hide a black eye with makeup. She was also either in complete denial, or completely clueless about her second husband, Tony’s stepfather.
“What are you implying?” Her angry voice was shrill. “My David isn’t like that! You think I married some kind of a... what? A faggot ?”
My blood pressure inched higher. A vein in my temple started to throb, promising a bombshell of a tension headache coming on.
Zalen, who could be made of marble when he needed to be, was doing that quiet alpha thing he sometimes did when a situation was really pissing him off.
“Your son Tony has leveled accusations of sexual molestation against his stepfather stretching back several years,” he said, in such an even tone that I seriously wondered how he managed it.
“My son’s name is Antony ,” said the woman, as though the poor kid’s legal name had any goddamn thing to do with this conversation. “Antony Scalise, like the Supreme Court judge!”
That was enough to make even Zalen stumble for a moment. “You mean... Antonin Scalia?”
“That’s what I said!” Tony’s mother scowled at us, crossing her arms defensively.
Zalen opened his mouth, paused as he thought better of whatever he’d been about to say, and shook his head sharply, as though dislodging a fly.
“The point is,” he said, steering the conversation back on track, “your son has declined to file a police report. However, it’s imperative that he be removed from the situation to prevent further abuse. We need to discuss—”
Mrs. Scalise shot to her feet, her chair’s legs screeching across the floor. “There is no abuse ! He... he’s just making up stories to get attention! I refuse to listen to this slander any longer!”
My temper boiled over in a red froth the color of blood. I pushed to my feet as well, looming over the table, and felt a surge of gratification when the woman cringed backward.
“You think a kid would make something like that up ?” I ground out, the words feeling like rocks grating against each other in my chest. I slapped my palms against the tabletop, leaning forward. “You’re his mother . You’re supposed to protect him ! Do you have any idea what kind of hell that boy is—”
A hand landed on my forearm, the suggestion of alpha power crackling through the contact. My teeth clacked together as my jaw clenched shut, cutting off the words.
“Why don’t you step outside for a few minutes, Emiel,” Zalen said, still in that eerily even tone of voice.
For a frightening instant, the knowledge that I was larger and stronger than Zalen burned in my stomach. I had more real-world fighting experience than he did, and I was fuckin’ sure angrier than he was right now.
Immediately on the heels of that thought came the familiar queasiness.
Loss of control . I was losing control—the thing that I could never, ever do outside of the fighting ring. My anger was still there, every bit as red and bubbling as it had been a moment before. But I still had to shove it down. I had to jam it back into its box, deep inside my chest, where it couldn’t get loose and hurt people the way I’d been hurt.
I gave a single, sharp nod, tasting bile as I pivoted on my heel and forced my legs to take one step after another—propelling me out of the room and down the hallway. Behind me, I heard Zalen’s oh-so-calm voice, but I couldn’t make out the words over the rushing of blood in my ears.
It wasn’t quite five o’clock yet. There were still other people in the building, which meant I needed not to be in the building. My feet followed a familiar path down a set of back stairs, along a service corridor, and out a small side entrance into the stinking alley between the Hope Project and the building next door.
There was nothing much back here. A few metal trash cans that never got emptied, as far as I could tell. A pan of water. A second pan of cat food that I set out every morning for the local strays. It was about half empty. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if the cats got more nutrition from the kibble, or from catching the mice and rats that came to steal it.
“ Mrrrow ,” came a soft, trilling cry from behind the trash cans.
After checking that there wasn’t any fresh piss on the step in front of the door, I sank down to sit on it and scrubbed a hand over my face. A few moments later, a slender gray form slipped out from its cover and padded toward me.
“Hello, Princess,” I greeted with a sigh, stretching out a hand as the cat hopped up on the step next to me.
She was a gawky adolescent streak of a feline, stuck partway between kitten and adult. She was also way too fine for this alley. For this city . Somehow, she always managed to be clean and shiny, sleek as mercury. After a moment’s consideration, she jumped onto my lap and submitted to my petting with a low, rumbling purr.
As it always did, her presence helped me stuff my rage back down where it belonged; out of sight until it had a safe target. I only had to hold on for a few more hours until my match tonight. Then I could get everything out of my system.
The doorknob turned behind me, the door creaking open on rusting hinges. A jolt of adrenaline cut through my hard-won calm. Princess twitched, digging claws into my thighs, but she didn’t leave her perch on my lap.
The scent of cut grass and honeysuckle tickled my nose, out of place among the alley’s stench of garbage and urine. I craned around to find Luca frozen in place, looking down at me with large green eyes. Beneath his own scent, the faintest hint of Byron’s spice clung to him, hanging on despite evidence of the shower he’d taken this morning.
Sometimes I really hated the sensitivity of my nose.
I was always careful to suppress my own scent. I took blocker pills religiously. I’d toyed with the idea of having my scent glands removed surgically. Something always held me back, but someday, I’d do it.
Unfortunately, none of that did a damned thing for my sense of smell. There were dampeners you could take to dull the scent of others, but you couldn’t take them all the time, or they lost effectiveness.
Those, I saved for Luca’s heats.
“Hi,” Luca said. “Sorry. I came out to clear my head for a few minutes; didn’t realize you were here.”
“’S’okay,” I said. “I was about to go back in.”
His gaze narrowed, his angular face screwing up in concern.
“Is everything all right?” he asked. “You look a little...” He trailed off.
“I’m fine,” I said, not liking the feeling that maybe my mask wasn’t covering the things it should be covering. I started to get up, realized I still had a cat velcroed to my trousers with her claws, and paused, stuck in place.
“You know,” Luca said, gesturing at Princess, “you could bring her to live at the house if you wanted. She doesn’t really belong in a place like this.”
I looked at the cat. Glanced back at Luca.
He looked like hell, especially considering he must’ve got laid last night. In some corner of my brain, I knew I should turn his own question back on him... ask him if he was all right. But the idea felt overwhelming.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, detaching the cat from my clothing and gently setting her down on the pavement.
It would be nice to rescue something and have it stay rescued. Maybe I’d mention it to Zalen. It was his house, after all.
Luca was still examining me like he had X-ray vision that could see through my bullshit. I stood up, dusted myself down, and cleared my throat.
“Guess I’ll go back in and take care of some paperwork until it’s time to leave,” I said.
An eyebrow rose. “You hate paperwork.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I do.”
Luca stepped back and let me get past him, his sweet scent brushing across my skin like a physical touch. I moved quickly by him and headed for my office, not looking back. Only a few more hours until I could climb into a cage with another alpha and stop feeling like this for a little bit.
Only a few more hours .