It was two weeks after the incident in the woods. Two weeks of coddling Casersis until he stopped giving me wary looks, until he stopped looking like a kicked puppy. Two weeks with him up my ass, and with little or no relief from the boredom. I was going apeshit. I needed to get the fuck out of this house and go somewhere, anywhere. Preferably without Casersis tagging along. Preferably without having to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, without having to worry about what I said or how I said it.
I needed to reconnect with the world I knew. It was necessary if I was to remain sane. Granted, I’d always said sanity was overrated, but this was ridiculous. I mean, I didn’t mind coddling Cass. It helped ease something inside me—this alpha thing. It helped me find the control I needed in my life. It made me feel powerful in a way that made me also feel protective of Dawn’s Lament and every person who lived and worked in the giant-ass castle on the hill.
Somehow, taking care of Casersis made me want to be a better person. He made me want to be a better person. With him, I could take care of someone. I couldn’t really explain it, even to myself, but feeling needed made me less restless. But even with some of that restlessness gone, I needed to get the fuck out of that house before I hurt someone. Physically hurt them, not emotionally.
I wanted to punch someone every time I saw a closed door. And that wasn’t like me. I didn’t like who I was becoming in that regard. And if Casersis denied me a day out again, I’d lose my shit even more than I already had.
The worst thing was I couldn’t even find the bastard. I’d combed the entire estate, growling to myself every time I felt Don following me. I knew he was there. I could feel him staring at the back of my head. But when I’d turn around, there would be no one there. Sneaky bastard. It was just the day before yesterday that Kevin introduced me to him, let me know he was my bodyguard.
What the fuck did I need a bodyguard for in the estate? Why was he following me around like a lost puppy? The estate, even though I couldn’t see them, crawled with security. I was safer here than anywhere else on Earth. So why did I have to have a tag-along?
It made the induced claustrophobia worse by adding in paranoia and the sense of being crowded, even when I was alone—like now.
It took everything I had not to punch a wall when I found yet another room empty. Where the fuck was everyone? Beth wasn’t even in the kitchen or her parlor where she usually was.
I finally got fed up with everything, turned around, and glowered at the door where I knew Don was hiding. “Okay. Come out, Don. I know you’re there.”
It took a moment. I could almost hear the bastard breathing. But he finally opened the door and walked toward me. “What do you need, sir?”
“First, don’t call me ‘sir’ when you know my name. It’s Dustin.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to calm down. “And where the fuck is Cass?”
Don, like the good bodyguard he was, didn’t flinch at my attitude. “He had to go into one of his companies early this morning. He most likely won’t return until later this evening.”
“Great.” Now I wanted to punch Casersis. “And Bradley?”
“We released him the day before yesterday so that Erastus wouldn’t get suspicious.”
Which meant I had no one to vent my frustrations on. That was actually a good thing, no matter what my urges said. I didn’t need to get into a fight and piss anyone off. Yes, I’d love to piss Casersis and Kevin off, but that was a decidedly bad idea and a severely unkind urge.
Just then, my CommLink went off, and I stared at it. “Casersis calling,” said the pleasant female voice. I suddenly wanted to program it to a male one. I wasn’t even sure why.
I stared at it a bit longer before I finally gave up. “Answer on speaker.”
The moment the call clicked over, I growled. “Couldn’t even let me know you were leaving?”
Casersis sounded sheepish as he said, “I did not wish to wake you, beauty. You have my sincerest apologies.”
“Not even a note, Cass? Really?” I stared at my palm, wishing I had Casersis right there in front of me instead of an empty palm that had my implant just under the skin. I wanted to rip it out and grind it under my shoe. It was irrational, but at that moment, I didn’t care.
“But Don was supposed—”
“Pardon me, sir, but don’t you blame that on me,” Don piped up. “You told me nothing of the sort.”
I barely heard Casersis mutter, “Traitor,” before he heaved a sigh. It sounded as if he brought his implant closer to his face when he said, “I am sorry, Dustin. Truly. I—”
I cut him off, my voice clipped and angry, “When will you be home?”
Something about the way Casersis inhaled—sharp, quick, and shaky—did something to my insides that I didn’t want to look at too closely. “I have a few meetings I must attend. I will be home before dinner.”
“Then I’m going out.” The demand made Don stiffen and stare at me. I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes, but it suspiciously looked like panic, especially when he looked at my ears.
“That is not a good idea,” Casersis warned. “I would need to place the glamor on you, and I cannot get out of these meetings. I must leave soon for my next one.”
“How soon?”
He sighed. “Five minutes. I called you as soon as I had a break.” I heard fabric rustle as if Casersis shifted or was changing clothes. “Please, wait for me, beauty. Please.”
“I can wear a hat,” I reasoned. “It’s cold enough for a hoodie. I can just pull the hood up. But either way, I am getting out of this house.”
“Please, Dustin.” The begging in Casersis’s voice almost softened my heart, almost made me want to obey. “Please do not do this. Please stay inside until I can return home.”
My mouth opened and shut. I almost caved. Part of me wanted to cave to his begging. I clenched the hand that didn’t have my implant and glowered at the one that did. If he wanted to play that game…
“You won’t win this, Cass,” I growled at him. “I will get out of this house. I’ll be considerate and keep Don with me, but I am getting off this property.”
“And where will you go,” Casersis asked, sounding so defeated my heart clenched. “What will you do?”
The grim smile that my lips curled into felt foreign on my face. “Somewhere that isn’t here.”
“That is so very exact, beauty,” Casersis teased half-heartedly. “Could you be more specific, please?”
“No. I don’t think I will. I’ll talk to you when you get home. Go to your meeting, Cass. End call.”
Once the call clicked off, I took a deep breath and leveled Don with a stare that made the man flinch. “You ready to break some rules, Don?”
“May I wire you first?” And shit, if he didn’t grin at me like we were best friends. I kinda liked that about him. “That way, if you lose me, I can find you if you get into trouble.”
I rolled my eyes and grinned back at him. “Fine. I just want to get out. I don’t want to give Cass too much heart failure. But come on. I need to change, and you can wire me up when I change shirts. I’ll put the hoodie on to be safe.”
“And a bandanna around your head, just in case it blows off?”
I smirked and led the way to my bedroom. “Don’t get cocky. The hoodie I have in mind won’t blow off. It’s kinda snug.”
“You mean it’s too small,” he said as he fell into step beside me. “Casersis might have heart failure about that more than you leaving the grounds.”
“No shit.” I snorted and shook my head. “He’s such a clothes whore.”
“Clothes horse,” Don corrected.
I gave him the stink eye. “Yes, that, but mine fits better. He is a whore for clothes.”
Don chuckled and nodded. “I’ll give you that.”
We walked the rest of the way to my room in silence, except for me declining more calls from Casersis. I finally got fed up and told my CommLink to ignore all calls from him and pushed my door open.
After I changed into a pair of comfortable jeans and ditched my expensive-as-fuck shirt, I sat still while Don wired me up, rather weirded out that he actually used wires in this day where everything was wireless and tiny. The microphone he taped to my chest seemed to come from another era, but I didn’t say anything about it. Just let him do his thing. And when he shoved an earpiece into my ear that looked more like a wireless hearing aid, I grimaced but said not a word. Don was nice, and I’d cooperate just to get the fuck out of this house.
As much as Casersis kept telling me it was, this place wasn’t home. I didn’t have one of those anymore, and I needed a day out. A day away from this place. A day where I could see the city instead of just this house and endless trees.
Once Don had me hooked up and clipped the microphone’s battery to my waistband, I slipped on a gray thermal long-sleeved shirt, pulled my favorite black Kaudien t-shirt over top, then topped both off with a zip-up black hoodie that had Kaudien’s band logo on the front over the breast and an elaborate mask with bleeding eyes and mouth on the back.
“Current weather,” I said absently as I led the way to the front door.
My CommLink replied, “Forty-six degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy, the chance of rain is twenty percent. Light rain expected around seven o’clock this evening.”
Good enough. We stopped by the hall closet, grabbed our jackets, and once I had mine on and my hood up, Don called for one of the other security team to bring a car around.
It saved me from calling a taxi. I couldn’t fault that.
“Where do you want to go?” Don asked once we settled in the back seat of the car. Its quality was so high that it didn’t even dip when we got in, the hover mechanism so quiet that I couldn’t tell if it was running or not. I was so out of my fucking league.
“My job site. It’s the new hospital wing across town.”
Don grimaced. “They completed that project this week. But I know where that company has moved to.” He gave the address to our driver, and I reclined in the seat. Hell, the vehicle was so high quality, I had to look out the window to tell we were moving. I gawked as I realized we weren’t even on the property anymore, and we hadn’t even been gone two minutes. How fast were we going?
And then I realized I didn’t care. With each passing tree, I felt something in my chest loosen as if Dawn’s Lament—that awful and wonderful estate—had secured bands of steel around my ribcage.
For the first time in weeks, I felt free. Casersis couldn’t take this away from me. Not today. I just needed a few hours out of that place, a few hours of air that didn’t belong to Dawn’s Lament, a few hours where I could be myself, by myself.
I glanced over at Don and smirked. Okay, so not so much by myself. I couldn’t ditch Don. No, I wouldn’t ditch Don. Ditching him was easy, or I thought it would be, but I couldn’t do that to him. Cass would go insane if I did and he found out, and Don would be the one to suffer.
It didn’t take long for us to pull up outside a chain-link fence surrounding a newly blasted site with the growing skeleton of a building where an old, decrepit one used to be. The ground was nothing but dirt and the start of an elaborate basement. The people were bundled up and working furiously to get the job done without freezing their asses off.
I slid out of the car once the driver opened the door and headed straight for the mobile office with “Nichol’s Construction Company” written in huge green letters across the side. My boss had it out front to the left of the construction yard not far away. And once I got to the door, I turned to Don. “Wait outside the door?”
“Yes, boss,” Don said with a smirk. But smirk aside, he took position to the side of the door, facing out to make sure I stayed safe.
I heaved a sigh before knocking on the door. When I heard a gruff voice say, “Enter!” I headed in, closing the door behind me to keep the warmth inside. “Hey, Joe.”
Joe snapped his head up and stared at me out of surprisingly clear gray eyes. He was a large man, balding on top with steely gray hair and a craggy face. I loved the bastard like a father, felt comfortable with him enough to head on in and plop down into the chair across from his desk. “You don’t look sick.”
I shrugged because I wasn’t sick, but I couldn’t let him know that. “I’m feeling better, but I’ll be out for a while yet. Not sure how long.”
He leveled me with a piercing look, and it took everything I had to keep my posture straight and not cower under that gaze. “And just what is wrong with you. Your friend never said. He just said you were ill and sent me doctors’ notes, but they never gave me a diagnosis. And it seems to me like you’re skipping out on work just to fuck a boyfriend.”
I couldn’t help the blush that flared across my face and down my neck. Hell, even the tips of my ears felt like they were on fire, and I grimaced. I had fucked Casersis, many times, during my absence. Fuck. What was I supposed to say?
Don’s voice came cool and collected in my ear. “Tell him you’re recovering from gene therapy, and you didn’t want anyone to know.”
Right. Because at least gene therapy was the explanation that was as close to the truth as possible. Ugh. I shrugged again. “I’ve been undergoing a lot of gene therapy, and I needed time off for it to all blow over. I just didn’t want it to be public knowledge.”
“Gene therapy for what?” Joe demanded.
I tried not to grimace again. Pretty sure I failed. “Apparently, I was dying, and the gene therapy is supposed to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Don muttered into my ear through the earpiece, “Close enough.”
Yeah. Close enough. Because with the changes I was undergoing, I’d be immortal unless someone physically killed me. Close enough, indeed.
Joe blanched. He’d taken me under his wing as a sixteen-year-old kid, gave me a job, taught me the tricks of the trade. He was more like my father than my actual father was, mostly because I couldn’t remember my birth father very well. And the sudden paling of Joe’s face told me he cared. “Good to know you’re not keeling over any time soon. When can you come back to work?”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “I’m not sure. I’m still undergoing the gene therapy. I just wanted to see you.”
Joe’s face softened at that, and he reached across the desk. I put my hand in his, and he squeezed so tight tears burned my eyes. Not because it hurt, but because it made my heart hurt.
“I’m glad you came, kid. But you’re doing okay? Is it invasive?”
I wrinkled my nose and sat back once he let my hand go. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s mostly just annoying as fuck.”
My boss nodded and sat back, as well. “You never were one to sit idle. I—”
We both froze as we heard a commotion just outside the door. My blood ran cold. “Don, what’s happening outside?”
The door to the mobile office opened. “Mr. Armistead—”
Don’s voice got cut off with Erastus’s clipped tone, “I own this property. You will not keep me out of my contractor’s office, you little peon.”
“Let him go, Don,” I said. I tried to keep the defeat out of my voice and felt confident I succeeded. “Just come in and stay with us, yeah?”
Joe raised a brow at me. “Personal security?”
I shrugged. “The procedure is experimental. They don’t want their lab rat kidnapped.”
My boss snorted and gave Erastus his full attention. “What can I do for you, Mr. Armistead?”
My heart raced as Erastus sauntered in. Would he keep my secret? Why would he? But as I watched him, he gave me an inscrutable stare, a slight nod, and focused on Joe. “I would like the projection reports for the next three months. And as Dustin here will not be working for the foreseeable future, I would like to ensure you are not understaffed. This is one of my most important projects.”
I couldn’t help myself. Erastus actually sounded nice. Approachable. Who was this, and what had he done with Erastus? “What is the project?”
Erastus dropped his gaze to me and lifted a brow. “A housing complex for the underprivileged.”
“Another slum.” I sagged in my seat, disappointed.
“No,” he said, his voice curt. “It will be quite a bit nicer than Seymour Commons, where you lived. I will be relocating residents from there and moving them into these apartments once it is finished so I can tear that building down and replace it with an updated complex. It hasn’t been updated in over fifty years.”
I snorted. “Yeah. I thought it was longer, but that sounds about right. And I bet you’re going to make them pay the moving fees.”
For some reason, Erastus seemed sad about that. “No, actually. My moving company will pack them up and move them in a timely fashion, the fees coming out of my own profits.” He shrugged, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, and looked away. “In any event, this place will have no one-room apartments. There will always be at least one bedroom separate from the main living area. Seymour Commons is… uninhabitable.” He said the last with such distaste I almost laughed if his presence didn’t freak me out so bad.
Joe looked from me to Erastus to Don a few times before shaking his head and saying, “I’ll have it ready for you in fifteen minutes, Mr. Armistead.”
“Splendid,” Erastus said with what seemed to be genuine warmth. “I will use the time to speak with Dustin.” He laid a hand on my shoulder, locking eyes with me. “Come with me, please.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, keeping my voice and tone even. “Not a chance in hell.”
Erastus lifted an immaculately sculpted brow. “You will come, or you will lose your job, and I hear you are trying hard not to do that.”
My stomach dropped to my feet. Fuck. What had I gotten myself into?
