As Adrian drew away, Sterling reached out and wrapped a hand around the back of Adrian’s head. Adrian’s eyes widened, his irises particularly devoid of hue in the moonlight, but when Sterling crushed their lips together and claimed Adrian’s mouth in the way he truly wanted, it didn’t matter. Adrian’s eyes closed. Sterling’s did, too. Their lips met, slow but scorchingly passionate, until Sterling released the back of Adrian’s head and let himstepaway.
“Go,” Sterling told him. He ran his lower lip against the inside of his upper lip, tasting Adrian there. “Be with him. And if you need someone to be with you, you know where tofindme.”
Adrian nodded, mute. His eyes were partially lidded in the dreamy way that made Sterling’s heart soar. One kiss was all it took to drag Adrian back into the moment, and one blissful, meaningful kiss was all it took for Sterling to understand that Adrian wasn’t just anotherlostsoul.
He’d been broken by circumstance, but that didn’t mean that he was worthless. In fact, it was theopposite.
All of Adrian’s jagged pieces fit into Sterling’sperfectly.
What they suffered, they sufferedtogether.
Adrian’s gaze flickered to the side, and at last he ducked his head and turned back to be with Gabriel. As their paths split, Sterling took a step back. No matter what he would have preferred, Adrian’s battle didn’t belong to him. It was time for himtogo.
As Adrian’s relatives laughed and chatted on the lawn, Sterling sank into the driver’s seat of his Lexus and started the engine. From the corner of his eye, he watched Adrian settle onto the stoop. Gabriel opened up his blanket cape and draped it over Adrian’s shoulder, and they sat in silencetogether.
Every villain had his story. The foul-tempered, quick-to-anger young man bore more pain than most of The Shepherd’s patrons could handle, and he’d done it for years. It was no wonder why Adrian acted out as he did—if Sterling hadn’t had Clarissa to keep him grounded, he would have turned outthesame.
The Lexus backed down the driveway until it was clear of the other parked cars, then made a tight turn. Sterling drove the rest of the way, watching the crowd on the lawn in his rear-view mirror until they were obscured bydistance.
A lost sheep had found his way home tonight. A family had been reunited. Another soul had beensaved.
But Sterling couldn’t shake the feeling that his jagged pieces had become a bit more jagged now that he’d left their matching halfbehind.
11
Adrian
Gabriel’sfavorite thing in the world was plain saltines. They hadn’t been four years ago, but as he adjusted to the household and started to unwind, Adrian noticed the little things he’d never noticed before—things like how when Gabriel sat on the couch and zoned out to a television program, he kept his knees bent and his legs pressed against his chest, and how his toes curled around the edge of the couch cushion like he was a bird perching on a branch. When he did sleep, he slept lightly. If Adrian so much as opened his bedroom door a crack, Gabriel roused. Sometimes, caught in between deep sleep and wakefulness, he’d call out for someone named Garrison. Adrian closed the door quickly when that happened. He didn’t know what to think of it, and he was too afraidtoask.
Gabriel didn’telaborate.
The first month after Gabriel came home, Adrian was too busy to focus on the little mysteries, anyway. School was out for the summer, and with their mother in the state she was in and their father more interested in running his company than spending time with his sons, Adrian was the one left to provide forGabriel.
The first week was spent ferrying Gabriel back and forth from the police station, where the missing person’s case was closed, but little else was done. Gabriel spoke in vague terms about what had happened to him, and when the police asked for more details, he shook his head and ducked his gaze. Sometimes Adrian caught his eye when that happened, and the sorrow on Gabriel’s facedestroyedhim.
The police gave up, Gabriel was glad, and Adrian tried not to think about the events that had scarred Gabriel so deeply he couldn’t bring himself to speakofthem.
On the second week, Adrian sat with Gabriel through clinical visits for routine checkups. Blood was drawn and tested for signs of disease. Gabriel came back negative on all counts. The only service he refused was a rape kit. Adrian liked to think it was because wherever Gabriel had been before, he hadn’t been abused. But the truth in Gabriel’s uncertain gaze and his hunched posture saidotherwise.
On the third week, Adrian took Gabriel everywhere he’d loved to go before he vanished. They slurped milkshakes in Adrian’s car while listening to oldies on the radio, and wandered through the park not all that far from the Lowe estate where Adrian had kissed his firstboyfriend.
On the fourth week, Adrian prepared himself for the onset ofhisheat.
On the fifth week, his heat failed toarrive.
Blockers—no matter how effective they claimed to be at curtailing the full-body sweats and crushing arousal heat brought with it—were only temporary relief at best. Even while medicated, when Adrian’s heat struck, he felt it. Frequent, unwanted erections not even the darkest thoughts could chase away were accompanied by some of the worst cravings to be filled and seeded that Adrian had ever weathered. During the days his body was supposed to be achieving peak fertility, he could smell the change in his scent—the sharp, addictive sweetness that broadcast to any alpha present that he was ready to be bred. It never packed the punch that an unmedicated heat did, but it never fully vanished,either.
By the end of the sixth week, his heat still hadn’tarrived.
By week seven, out of his mind with worry, Adrian broke away from Gabriel long enough to take the pregnancy test he’d ordered online with him into the bathroom. Outside of its box, the white, sterile stick was deceptively simple. A single blue line stretched across the center of an oval window, waiting for its partner to appear. The tester strip was capped with clear plastic to keep the test clean untilusage.
Adrian set the test down on the toilet lid, then pulled the instructions from the box and unfolded them. Three languages later, Adrian found the English instructions and read the steps carefully. He’d never taken a pregnancy test before, and he was determined to do itright.
The test advertised results in thirty to sixty seconds, accurate as early as the first week after conception. Adrian poked at his flat abdomen and frowned. If he was pregnant, he didn’tfeelpregnant. It wasn’t like he was bloated, or tired, or sick—and he wasalwaysirritable, so his short temper wasn’tanythingnew.
Sperm only lived for a maximum of five days in the uterus. He’d read it online from various sources. And it wasn’t like his uterus was all that receptive to sperm, anyway. It was only during the narrow window of his heat that his body opened the passage leading to his reproductivetract.
He hadn’t had sex duringhisheat.
