Jono checked the time on his mobile, seeing that it was nearly 1100. Last night had been hectic and long, and they all needed the sleep it seemed like. He padded into the kitchen to get the coffee started for Patrick and put the kettle on the hob for his own tea. He opened the fridge and studied its contents, wondering if he had enough to do a proper fry-up. They hadn’t had a chance to go to the grocer, and they needed to.
He leaned down to open the crisper, looking for the last package of bacon they hadn’t yet eaten their way through. A loud thump from the living room and Wade’s startled yelp after he rolled off the sofa had Jono laughing softly.
“I’m making breakfast. You hungry?” Jono called out.
He didn’t expect an answer but was going to make enough food to feed them all anyway. He sorted out the eggs, bacon, cheese, and bread on the counter before digging up a skillet. Jono turned his head when Wade slunk into the kitchen, warily pointing at the coffee that was half-finished brewing.
“Coffee?” Wade asked.
Jono pointed at the cabinet where they kept the mugs. “Creamer and milk are on the bottom shelf the fridge. Sugar is in the jar over there.”
Patrick didn’t cook, which meant the kitchen was organized to Jono’s satisfaction and no one else’s. He didn’t mind cooking—it saved him money rather than ordering takeaway all the time—but Jono enjoyed it more when he could cook for other people.
Wade picked out the biggest coffee mug they had and proceeded to fill it up. He left enough room for some creamer and about ten heaping teaspoons of sugar. Jono said nothing about the preparations, knowing that Wade’s metabolism had to be like his own—brutally fast, and capable of burning through thousands of calories in a single day. The teen needed to put on some weight after the ordeal he’d survived. He was far too scrawny underneath the scrubs he still wore.
“You won’t fit any of my clothes, but you can borrow some of Patrick’s until we buy you some,” Jono said as he started laying out bacon in the hot skillet.
“I don’t got any money,” Wade said, scowling. “And I ain’t selling you anything else.”
The implications made Jono tamp down on the fury burning hot in his chest. “We aren’t here to take anything from you, Wade. We just want to keep you safe.”
Wade didn’t look like he believed what Jono was saying. Considering what they’d freed him from, Jono couldn’t blame him.
“Can’t keep me safe from the cartel. They own me. They’ll try to take me back.”
Jono tapped a finger near the corner of his right eye. “God pack, mate. And Pat is a mage. Trust me when I say no one is getting through us to get to you.”
He didn’t mention the gods running amok through both their lives, or the master vampire they currently were indebted to. All Wade needed to know was that Jono meant what he said.
“Tloque Nahuaque will kill you,” Wade said with that strange flatness to his voice Jono had heard before in Patrick’s. It spoke of deep-seated trauma, and when he looked at Wade, the teenager was staring into the distance without really seeing anything. “No one survives when they cross his path.”
“Who?”
Wade seemed to shake himself out of some horrible memory, coming back to the present. “He owns the cartel. He owns me.”
“No one owns you.”
Wade let out a hollow laugh, the sound something no one his age should ever know how to make. “The Omacatl Cartel has owned me since they picked me up before I even hitchhiked my way out of San Diego. You can’t help me. You’ll die if you try.”
“We’ll see,” Jono said with a shrug. “We don’t die easily.”
“The god pack here didn’t do anything. I don’t get why you think you can.”
Jono paused in flipping a piece of bacon over, giving Wade a narrow-eyed look. “What?”
Wade hunched his shoulders, taking a long sip of his coffee. An apple from the fruit bowl on the counter had found its way into the pocket of his scrub pants, weighing them down on one side.
“I came here earlier this year with a shipment of other people. Sometimes…sometimes I get to go out on my own. If I win enough fights.” Wade absently touched his throat where the collar had been, blinking rapidly. “I always come back. I have to.”
“Not anymore you don’t, and no one is going to blame you for that.”
Wade scowled, refusing to meet Jono’s eyes. “I’m a werecreature, or that’s what Tloque Nahuaque told me.”
“Gods lie.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know any better. They kept me collared. All the time. Made it so I couldn’t shift, but I was stronger than mundane humans. I didn’t have any reason not to believe what they told me.”
Jono tilted his head a little. “Do you still believe them now?”
