“Now?” Dex asked.
“Yes, now!” Jude snapped, and Dex cringed away.
“Okay.” Rusty nodded, fingers flexing on Jude’s shoulders. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Chapter eighteen
Jude’s Broken Heart
Dex
Rusty’shandsclenchedthesteering wheel, eyes alert, jaw tense. In the passenger seat, Jude sat curled in a ball, knees hugged to his chest, as he stared out the window, eyes open but unseeing. And then there was Dex, sitting in the middle of the back seat of Hemersyn’s black sedan as he questioned all of his life choices that had landed him here.
According to Rusty and Jude, this was all Dex’s fault—technically, he’d argued, it was Toni’s fault, but neither of the short kings had appreciated that claim. So he’d been dragged along on the expedition to find a pharmacy so they could confirm what he and Rusty already knew to be true. Apparently, it had also been up to him to figure out the how and the where of it all.
More nonchalant than he’d ever been in his life, Dex had meandered back onto the veranda and asked Hemersyn to show him the bathroom. Once inside the house, he’d immediately relayed their urgent need for a pharmacy. Cool and collected, the Avia had handed over hiskeys, warning Rusty to be careful, and pointed them in the direction of a store ten minutes away.
“He’s not even human,” Jude said, still staring out the window. “We aren’t even the same species.”
Dex waited for Rusty to respond, but when the Pyclon didn’t, he took it upon himself. “Some species are compatible with humans. Fye species, usually, but clearly some Myre species are too. You know, given your situation.”
Sniffling, Jude curled up tighter in the passenger seat. “This can’t be happening.”
With a growl, Rusty glared at Dex through the rearview mirror, and Dex slumped lower in his seat. “Sorry, I talk when I’m nervous.”
Thankfully, the car’s GPS announced that they had arrived at their destination, and Dex had never been more thankful to leave the confines of a car. Jude’s sadness and fear were so heavy and choking, stinging his nose with their sour stench.
Standing in front of the wall labeled, “Family Planning,” the three of them stared at the shelves of condoms, lubrication, and there, near the bottom, pregnancy tests. Jude stared at the rows of boxes depicting women with round bellies or babies with too-happy smiles. Rusty stared at Jude. Dex stared at Rusty, then Jude, then Rusty again.
“Which one works on humans?” Jude asked, almost robotically.
Rusty crouched down and scanned the options. “They probably all look for similar hormone traces.”
“That one’s in English.” Dex pointed at one in the corner. “How many do you want?”
Jude’s blank expression glitched, and for a moment, he looked about to cry. Then he blinked, and the emotion was gone, replaced with a cold emptiness.
“All of them,” he said, then he turned and walked away.
After exchanging worried looks, Rusty and Dex gathered one of every test the store sold. Since Rusty was only in his board shorts, they dumped the boxes into the makeshift sack Dex created with the end of his shirt. They met Jude at the register where the human set a small stack of disposable cups on the counter.
With a grunt, Dex heaved his sack of pregnancy tests onto the counter where they spilled out with a clatter. The girl behind the register—a Chyro with large, wide ears, leathery wings, and cloudy eyes hidden behind thick glasses—blew a bubble with her gum and stared disparagingly down at the counter.
“Find everything okay?” she asked after her bubble popped.
“Yup,” Rusty said.
She scanned each pregnancy test, clearly judging them with every beep of the scanner, and Dex rolled from his heels to his toes and back again. Jude was staring off into the distance again, his index finger tapping the counter rapidly. Rusty twisted and kneaded his tail as the claws of his feet flexed, fraying the carpet fibers.
“Your purchase comes with a free bottle of lube,” the Chyro said, lip curling to reveal her little fangs. “Or a box of condoms, though I assume it’s a bit late for that.”
Rusty growled, but Dex intervened before anyone got arrested for mauling. “Could we have a bag?”
“Ten cents,” she said.
“Put it on my tab,” Dex said, and her right ear twitched.
The second the tests and disposable cups were in the plastic bag, Jude snatched it out of her clawed hand and said, “Where’s your bathroom?”
