“I don’t smoke anymore.”
Keith stared at Patrick, his burger lifted halfway to his mouth. “Excuse me?”
“Jono hates the smell, so I stopped.”
Keith let out a long whistle. “Damn. Never thought I’d see the day you’d give up smoking.”
“I’m learning better habits.”
“You still go to therapy?” Gerard wanted to know.
Patrick nodded. “When I need to.”
He was a veteran, and the Thirty-Day War had been shitty for all of them. Only Gerard, Keith, Arthur, and Darren had opted to stay in uniform and continue to fight, while Patrick had entered the civilian world, nursing wounds that still bled in different ways even these many years later. Patrick wasn’t ashamed of his mental health needs, but his visits to group therapy or his therapist had lessened over the last six months since meeting Jono.
After destroying Tremaine’s Night Court, when the sense memory of being held down on Santa Muerte’s altar was too insidious to ignore, Patrick had reached out for help a little more often. The nightmares were ugly, but waking up with Jono by his side always made it easier to call his therapist. The support he’d received from everyone had gone a long way toward Patrick finding his balance again.
That didn’t mean he’d forgotten what had happened to him. Patrick compartmentalized his life because he had to. Some days, ignoring that the assault had occurred was the easiest option. What he never ignored was Jono’s presence in his life.
“You haven’t said much about Jono,” Gerard said.
“I’m not going to say anything incriminating on an unsecured line.” Patrick took a bite of his hamburger, making sure to get a piece of the bacon he’d added on. “He’s god pack.”
And god-touched.
But that was a detail he wasn’t about to disclose, no matter how much Patrick trusted his old team. That information was Jono’s alone to reveal.
“Does the Old Man know?”
Patrick snorted, thinking about General Noah Reed. “Jono told the Old Man off when they first met.”
Keith’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. “And your boy survived that meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Does Jono know about the Morrígan’s staff?” Gerard asked.
“My entire pack does.”
Gerard paused in picking up another fry, silver eyes narrowing. He shoved the fry into his mouth before leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Your entirepack? Is this one of those things you didn’t want to discuss on an unsecured line?”
“What do you think?”
“I thought the SOA wasn’t ever going to give you a partner?” Keith asked, moving the chicken wings around on the plate to find the best one to eat. He had a habit of digging for the crispiest piece, and Patrick was glad to see that hadn’t changed.
“They didn’t. The gods gave me Jono.”
Keith’s head snapped up, mouth dropping open. “Oh, shit.”
The team’s survivors of the Thirty-Day War knew about Patrick’s fucked-up family and ties to the gods. His secrets had been peeled open beneath the hot desert sun in the push to stop Ethan’s sacrificial spell in Cairo, Egypt, three and a half years ago. There’d been no hiding from his past anymore at that point, nor hiding the soul debt that tied him to Persephone.
Patrick was the reason, after all, for the graves in Arlington of the Hellraisers who hadn’t made it home.
Gerard and the rest of them knew the truth, because that was the least Patrick owed them after they lied for him to the brass at the end of that fight. Ethan was a known threat to national security and always would be. Patrick’s identity as his son was tied up in the courts, and even the military wasn’t privy to that information.
His team had helped keep his secrets, because that’s what family did.
“Can you trust him?” Gerard asked.
