Allhan’s eyes lifted. “I’ll find it.”
“Sure you will. But if you don’t, it’s not—”
“I’ll find it.”
As things got quiet again, V stroked his goatee and decided he might as well tackle the obstacle in the room. “Listen, Al. I think it’s time to choose.”
“Choose what?”
Thedoggenchef swooped in with a plate of sauced white rice, a fork, and a napkin. “For you, master.”
Allhan looked up, but kept his eyes on the cloth buttons down the front of the cook’s white uniform. “Thank you,” came a small voice.
The servant’s face grew gentle. “Anything you wish, I shall make for you.”
Thedoggenbowed and headed back to his station. As the kid started to eat, V imagined where Allhan would be without him and Jane taking him in. Fucking hell, V’d seen a lot of depravity in his life, but the idea that Allhan’s parents had abandoned him? Just fucked the kid off without any money or clothes, no place to live, a pretrans about to go through the change with no one to help him? He’d literally shown up at Safe Place six months ago because he’d heard about it online in one of the private groups for the species. He’d been dehydrated and starved, and his shoes had been worn through because he’d walked all the way across town.
After having waited like a dog for a week for his parents to come back for him, outside on the doorstep of the house they’d been renting.
They’d locked him out when they’d left, and he’d been too polite to break in because he hadn’t wanted them to be in trouble if he damaged the landlord’s doors and windows. Fortunately, as a pretrans, he could still handle daylight, and he’d literally just sat there by himself.
Thank fuck he’d had a phone that still worked—
“This is good.”
V refocused on that too-lean, too-pale face. “It’ll settle your stomach.”
“Did your father give it to you when you were nearing the change?”
V thought back to his youth in the war camp. His sire, the Bloodletter, had set up fights for him. And when he’d won, he’d had to fuck the loser in front of everybody.
Oh wait, that had been after his transition.
“Yeah,” he said roughly. “He did. Handy, huh.”
“You must have had really good parents.”
An image came to him of hismahmenin her black robe, a diminutive, disagreeable entity who didn’t allow anyone to question the great Scribe Virgin. Ever.
“The best,” he muttered.
Refusing to go down the rabbit hole of his past, he let Allhan get through half of what was on the plate before repeating, “So, yeah, it’s time to choose.”
“For what?”
V narrowed his eyes on the plate that was getting mercifully cleaner by the moment. “You’re too smart to play dumb.”
Allhan took a deep breath and sat back. “I don’t like to think about the change.”
“I know.” V rubbed the center of his own chest. “But we have to be practical. Is there anybody you want to be there with you—”
“You.”
The answer was shy, but the speed with which it came out of that mouth was a kicker. And fuck him very much, V was absolutely, positively not blinking faster all of a sudden.
“I’ll be there. Wherever, whenever it happens.”
I’m not going to drop you like trash on the curb and drive away like I stole something. Not like those fucks you won’t tell us anything about.
