nonsense, but it stops here. The mating goes forward, or you’re going to find that how the glymera shuns you holds not a candle to what I will do to shut you out.”
Rochelle burst to her feet. “It is I who is unworthy of him—”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Boone interrupted with clarity. “And you’re right, sire mine, things are going to change around here.”
Altamere narrowed his eyes. “What’s gotten into you?”
Boone slowly shook his head. “This has been a long time coming. What is that economic theory you quote so often? That which cannot continue, does not. I’m done with living lies.”
As he stared into the eyes of the male who was supposedly his sire, he challenged Altamere to keep pushing him. And made it clear, at least psychically, that if that happened, he would pop the top off the great unthinkable.
Namely, the doubts around his paternity.
In front of witnesses.
You want to talk about shame? The glymera generally reserved its strictures and scorn for females, but a cuckolded male? Well . . . that didn’t bear thinking about, did it. To the point where Altamere had never even brought up the idea of a paternity test because the ramifications were too socially dangerous. Instead, the unanswered possibility that Boone had been fathered by another had lurked around the house, a ghost of infidelity that followed the “son” wherever he went.
Condemned for a suspected sin that had not been his own.
But that ended tonight.
After a long, tense silence, Boone’s sire finally looked at Rochelle. “I do not blame you for this choice.”
Altamere turned around and walked out, Marquist falling in behind him, the two disappearing into the study.
In the wake of the departure, Boone reached up to the knot of his tie and pulled it loose. It felt great to breathe.
“Why did you do that!” Rochelle said.
He thought of everything his father had ever said about him. “I am unworthy. It’s not a lie.”
“This is all my fault,” Rochelle groaned as she collapsed back onto the sofa.
As Boone dismantled the Windsor knot altogether, he thought back to the fact that he’d had to tie it with his eyes closed. Had entered this parlor with his lids down. Had lived . . . his whole life . . . in a blindness that was not just a choice, but a matter of survival.
Subconsciously, he had known that if he looked too closely—or at all—he was not going to be able to keep going. There was so much he had absorbed without realizing it, sure as if the toxic airs of the aristocracy had been an actual gas that he had breathed in and been poisoned by. Except that was stopping the now.
If Rochelle could stand up for her love, he could gather the reins of his own life and decide who he would like to be. Where he would like to go. What he would like to learn. Without apology.
Her courage had inspired his own.
“I am so sorry,” Rochelle said with dejection.
Boone shook his head. “No matter what happens next, I am not.”
29th and Market Streets
Caldwell, New York
Boone’s shitkickers shredded the frozen tire tracks down the middle of the alley, his powerful body churning through the dirty city snow, air sucking into his lungs cold and punching out hot as steam from a locomotive’s stack. In his right hand, he had a twelve-inch serrated hunting knife. In his left, a length of chain.
Up ahead, by about thirty feet, a lesser was running as if its undead life depended on all the Usain Bolt the thing was pulling. The telltale sickly sweet stench of the enemy was thick in its wake, a tracker that Boone’s sensitive nose had picked up on seven blocks ago. The slayer was sloppy of foot, flappy of hand, and given how saturated its smell was, Boone wondered whether it was already injured.
The Black Dagger Brotherhood’s commanding officer, Tohrment, son of Hharm, set the nightly territories for the Brothers and fighters, carving up sections of downtown into quadrants that would be stalked for the enemy. Trainees such as Boone were paired with more experienced people, either Brothers or members of the Band of Bastards, in the interest of safety—especially as there was a new threat out on the streets.
Shadow entities. That were killing innocent vampire civilians.
Boone glanced over his shoulder. Tonight, he was working with Zypher. The Bastard was a great partner, a big, brutal male who nonetheless had a teacher’s patience and an eye for constant improvement.