“No!”
Nero knew that each denial was shouted with fury, but Josh was losing breath. Instead of a loud exclamation, it came out as a puff of air. And even that was weakening.
“We need to take care of your body, Josh.” He scooped up the man and carried him quickly into the gym. He didn’t want to take Josh back into the cage room, and he for damn sure didn’t want to go into the examination area. That was guaranteed to freak out everyone. Since he knew the gym area and where all the electrolytes were, he made a beeline there, kicking the door open with one foot while maneuvering Josh’s lanky body through the opening.
“No.”
He read the word off Josh’s lips because there was no sound behind it. And damn if his heart didn’t break at that sight. He’d known Josh all of three days, and in that time, he’d seen the guy go from a charming, fun showman readying for his big moment on stage, to this limp, ashen man too weak to even shiver. His body temperature was plummeting and…
Oh fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
A light had just sparked behind Josh’s eyes.
“Don’t you fucking go there, Josh! You stay right here with me!”
He invested all his energy in those words, verbally willing Josh to listen. And it worked—for a moment. Josh’s eyes widened and his mouth parted in shock. Best of all, the sparkle seemed to fade a bit, but it was hard to tell in the brightly lit gym.
As quickly as possible, he set Josh on the mat, and then he dropped down to his knees behind the guy.
“You’ve had your say,” Nero barked. He wanted to moderate his tone, but his heart was beating too fast for any control. His next words would determine whether Josh lived or died, and he couldn’t screw it up. “Now I’m going to tell you something you haven’t thought of. Something that brain of yours needs to know.”
The shimmer behind Josh’s eyes faded a bit, and Nero realized he’d found the way in. Josh was a thinker, and so he’d latch on to new information like a lifeline of espresso shots. And so Nero pushed it, saying the one thing that he was pretty damn sure Josh had never once heard before.
“I screwed up your life,” he said. “Me. No one else. I fucked you over, and I did it so royally that you’re never going to be the same. It’s my fault. Hate me, because I sure as hell deserve it.”
Josh didn’t respond, but he also didn’t dissolve into pretty sparks of energy. Better yet, his eyes remained fixed on Nero’s face, but that would change the moment Nero stopped talking. So he didn’t. He let his confession roll out, with all its humiliating truth.
“I know you’re a few months from graduation, about to get a doctorate. And I’ve just flushed eight years of education down the drain. Because you’re not going back to that lab. You’re not publishing any paper. We can’t afford the exposure.”
Josh’s eyes widened, and Nero rushed to the next horrible truth.
“And your best friend Savannah? You can’t talk to her. Not for a long while. I’m so fucking sorry for that, because I know you don’t make friends easily.”
A sheen of tears burned in Josh’s eyes, and that ripped straight through Nero’s heart.
“There’s more,” he rasped. Fuck, he was not going to allow himself the luxury of choking up. He’d done this to the man. The least he could do was own up to his own bastardy. “You know your big event at the con? I don’t know if you remember. You were freaking out and a wolf, but everyone thought it was the most fantastic thing they’d ever seen. They were on their feet and cheering you as if you’d won the Super Bowl.” Shit, not the Super Bowl. Not a sports reference. “Like… um… a Nobel Prize.” Did they cheer at that? “Or… um… a coolStar Warsthing.” Could he possibly suck more at geek references? “Anyway, they’d never seen anything like it, and you would have been the toast of the con. Years from now, they still would have talked about it.”
He swallowed.
“But we had to wipe their memories.”
Josh’s mouth dropped open slightly, but then his jaw flexed. He was trying to clench his teeth. That was good. Anger was good. And it sure as hell grounded a man in the here and now.
“There’s a magnetic pulse we can do to disrupt memories. It’s not close to 100 percent, but it messes with short-term memory. Maybe some of them will remember what happened, but in a vague kind of way. Specifics will be lost, and the first thing to go will be your name. They might remember that something amazing happened, but they won’t know you’re the one who did it.”
Josh’s color was coming back. His eyes were narrowing, and his brows pushed together. If ever a geek could look like he was about to become a linebacker, Josh wore that expression now. He was pissed and growing more so by the second. Which was a good thing, because it meant he wasn’t going to disappear.
“Your family ties aren’t strong. They’re not going to realize you’ve disappeared for a while. And worse, even if they do, your dad is just going to put it down to you fucking up again. Your father’s a first-class bastard, and that was a positive in our book. The faster your family washes their hands of you, the easier it is for us to make you one of us.” He dropped back on his heels. He wanted to touch Josh’s hand. He wanted to soothe them both with a caress or a kiss. Something that shared empathy and support.
But what Josh needed right now was his fury, not a warm blanket of comfort. So Nero straightened away from Josh and told the damning truth.
“I am 100 percent responsible for the shitshow your life has become. I knew all these things, and that made you more attractive in my mind. You were the first guy on my list, even before all the others. And now you have the opportunity to make me pay. Get stronger. Get a handle on your abilities. The moment you’re safe around other people, we can’t keep you here. We have laws like everybody else, and that’s one of them. We’re not allowed to enslave you.” He knew because he was usually the one reminding people of that law when certain über-powerful beings forgot that little detail.
“You’re weak right now because you need electrolytes and blood sugar. Finding out how to balance a new physiology is hard for everyone at first, but you’ll master it. And then we’ll have no ability to keep you here. You can walk right out and go back to your life. Maybe you’ll lose six months, tops, but you can finish school, reconnect with Savannah, and do your whole con show again another year. And you can do that knowing full damn well that you have fucked me over as much as I fucked you. Because we need scientists. We need doctors, chemists, and necromancers. Or antinecromancers. I don’t fucking know because I’m a grunt. And without you, we get screwed over, me most of all. Because it was my job to recruit you, and my job to save the new werewolves when they eventually go out in the field, and my job to figure out how to defeat a fire blast. So if you really want to make me pay—like in blood, pay—then walk away. Force me to watch my people die. Again. And know that you will have destroyed my life just as effectively as I have dropped a bomb into yours.”
His words ended, and God, he felt like he’d torn open his chest and exposed his own beating heart. He watched Josh’s eyes, hoping to see some softening there. Nice that there wasn’t any glow, but there sure wasn’t any reassurance there either, let alone forgiveness. No, Josh just lay on the mat glaring at Nero, and he had that right. So Nero forced himself to continue.
“There are sports drinks in the refrigerator over there. I’m going to get you one. You’ll feel better if you drink it. Choke down as much as you can and wait fifteen minutes. You’ll see what I mean. You’ll feel stronger. And once you do, we can talk some more. I swear, I’ll listen to everything you want to say. Cuss at me, insult my parentage, whatever you want, because I deserve it. Okay?”
