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The guy had survived the feeding, thanks to some true depravity on the Omega’s part, and Lash had to admit he was glad. He needed help understanding where he was at, and he wasn’t threatened by Mr. D.

“Hello?” the lesser said. "Y’all okay there?”

“You stay in the car.” It felt good to say that and know there wasn’t going to be any discussion. “I won’t be long.”

“Yes, suh.”

Lash looked back up at the Tudor palace. Lights glowed yellow in windows made of diamond-paned glass, and the house was spotlit from the ground like a beauty queen on a stage. Inside, people moved around, and he knew who they were by the shapes of their bodies and where they were.

On the left, in the sitting room, were the two who had raised him as their own. The one with the broad shoulders was his father, and the male was pacing, hand going up and down to his face as if he were drinking something. His mother was on the couch, all bobble-head proportioned with her elaborate chignon and her slender neck. She kept touching her hair, as if trying to make sure everything was in place even though it was no doubt sprayed stiff as a boxwood shrub.

To the right, in the kitchen wing, several doggen scurried around, moving from stove to cabinet to refrigerator to counter to stove.

Lash could practically smell the dinner, and his eyes watered.

By now, his parents must know about what had happened in the locker room and then at the clinic. They must have been told. They’d been out at the glymera’s ball last evening, but they’d been home all day, and both appeared to be unsettled.

He glanced at the third floor and the seven windows that marked his room.

“You going in?” the slayer asked, making him feel like a pussy.

“Shut the fuck up before I cut your tongue out.”

Lash unsheathed the hunting knife that hung from his belt and walked forward over the cropped grass. The lawn was soft under the new combat boots he had on.

He’d had to have the little lesser get him some clothes, but he didn’t like what he was wearing. It was all from Target. Cheap.

As he came up to the mansion’s front door, he put his hand to the security pad . . . but paused before he entered the code.

His dog had died a year ago. Of old age.

The thing had been a pedigreed rottweiler, and his parents had gotten it for him when he was eleven. They hadn’t approved of the breed, but Lash had been adamant, so they’d adopted one that was about a year old. First night in the house, Lash had tried to pierce the thing’s ear with a safety pin. King had bitten him so hard, the dog’s fangs had punctured his arm and come out the other side.

They’d been inseparable after that. And when that mean old dog had kicked it, Lash had cried like a little bitch.

He reached out and entered the pass code, then put his left hand on the door latch. The light over the door flashed on his knife’s blade.

He wished the dog were still alive. He would have liked to have one thing from his old life to carry forward into his new one.

He stepped into his house and headed for the sitting room.

When John Matthew came up to the doors of Wrath’s study, he was about as relaxed as a golfer in a thunderstorm, and the sight of the king made the anxiety worse. The male was sitting behind his delicate desk, frown on his face, fingers drumming, stare locked on the phone like bad news had just come in. Again.

John tucked what was in his hand under his arm and knocked quietly on the jamb. Wrath didn’t look up. “What’s doing, son.”

John waited for the king to glance across the way, and when he did, John signed with care. Qhuinn got kicked out of his family.

“Yeah, and I heard the beat-down was from an honor guard courtesy of them.” Wrath leaned back in his chair, the slender bones of the thing squeaking. “That father of his . . . typical glymera.”

The tone suggested that was a compliment along the lines of asswipe.

He can’t stay at Blay’s forever, and he has nowhere to go.

The king shook his head. “Okay, I know where you’re going with this,