“Thanks, but no,” the thief said. “Your roommate’s given me a new habit, so I’m good with that.”

As Balthazar lit up one of V’s hand-rolls, Butch faced off at the Bastard. “I don’t get it. You’re all in my ear about what Syn’s capable of, and I have no reason to doubt you. But Boone told me what happened a couple of months ago. Syn copped to attacking that human who was castrated, but Boone was the one who did it. Why’s your cousin saying he killed people he hasn’t?”

“I don’t think he’s lying now.” Balthazar exhaled a stream of smoke in frustration. “And Boone thing aside, Syn’s never had to lie before because the bloody knife was always in his dagger hand.”

“Look, I don’t mean to call you out.” Butch swallowed half his bourbon. “But you brought this to my attention, and I appreciate the open lines of communication, blah, blah, blah. I just don’t want to keep accusing this guy of shit he didn’t do. It’s not helping.”

“He admitted what he did, though.”

“He just told me he cut the legs off of a guy whose pins were still very much attached when he was taken to the morgue. It was the head that had been liberated. So he’s lying.”

Balthazar frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

There was a pause as Butch finished what he’d poured. And went for a refresh. “I need you to be honest with me.”

“Always.”

“Do you have something against the guy? Are you trying to screw him or something? ’Cuz from where I’m looking at things, it seems like you’re trying to set him up.”

Two and a half minutes after Jo came into work, her fingers were flying across her keyboard at her desk in the empty newsroom, her eyes locked on her computer screen, the edits to the article update being made so fast, she prayed that they made sense. When her cell phone went off, she answered it curtly with just her last name and tucked the thing into her shoulder so she could keep going.

In the back of her mind, as she listened to McCordle’s latest intel, she realized she was actually a reporter. And that felt good.

“Right. Yup. I got it. Thanks.”

She ended the call and kept on typing—

“What the hell are you doing.”

As she looked up, Dick threw the current copy of the CCJ down on her keyboard. Jabbing his forefinger at the front page, at the article Jo had researched, written, proofed, and typeset, along with the picture she had chosen, blocked, and set into the columns, he barked, “I thought I made myself clear. And where the hell is Bill.”

“Lydia lost the baby last night,” Jo said. “So he’s taking a personal day.”

Dick paused. But only for a split second. “Then I want Tony on this. And I’ll take care of that personally.”

As he lumbered off to his office and slammed the door, she had the image of a kid kicking apart their brother’s Lego set.

Jo looked at her screen. Spell-checked what was on it. And put that shit on the Internet.

Under her sole byline.

Then she got up from her chair and walked into Dick’s office without knocking. He was looming over his desk, dialing a landline, going back and forth between an old fashioned Rolodex listing and the keypad on the phone.

When he didn’t send a glare her way, she couldn’t tell whether he was ignoring her or if he was just focused on trying to get the numbers right without his reading glasses.

He looked up sharply when she cut the call by depressing the receiver’s home button and holding it down.

Before he could start yelling again, she said calmly, “You’re going to let me continue to report on Johnny Pappalardo and also the dead body found nine hours ago on that fire escape.”

The ugly flush that rode up Dick’s thick neck suggested that getting pissed off at her was the only exercise he’d had for the month.

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to do—”

Jo leaned in and lowered her voice. “It turns out I’m a helluva reporter. You know what my next story is going to be on? Sexual harassment at the CCJ by its editor-in-chief. How many women do you think will take my call on that? I figure I’ll start off by telling them my own story, the one about that business trip you asked me to take with you? That long weekend away—where you made it clear that if I didn’t go, I wasn’t going anywhere at this paper? How many other women who used to work here have a similar story, Dick?”

Her boss slowly shut his mouth.

Jo released the button on the phone, the dial tone loud in the silence between them. “Thinking of what kind of quote you’re going to give me? Make sure it’s a good one, one that your wife’ll understand. Her family owns this paper now, right? Plus, I’ll bet the story’ll have national reach, and you’ll need another job after she kicks you out of the house and you get fired here. So you better try to put yourself in a favorable light in twenty-five words or less.”

She gave him an opportunity to respond. When he put the receiver back in its cradle, she nodded.

“That’s what I thought,” Jo said as turned on her heel and left his office.

Butch entered the Pit from the underground tunnel that connected the mansion site to the training center. As he opened the steel-reinforced door with a code, he kept quiet. V and Doc Jane were doing some work down at the clinic, so they weren’t home, but Marissa had come back to read in bed right after Last Meal, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Her work at Safe Place was demanding, and if she were sleeping, he wanted her to log those hours of rest.

The domestic abuse center that his shellan ran was the first of its kind for the species, and not unlike her brother, Marissa had a strong service side to her nature. She was driven to help other people, but it also turned out she was a terrific businesswoman. She coordinated everything at the facility, from the females and their young, to the treatment plans by the social workers, and also the budgets, the supplies, the food, the clothing. She was amazing at her job, but leading a compassionate cleanup crew for vulnerables who had been beaten, abused, neglected, and worse, was exhausting.

It was hard stuff to take, night after night.

Of course, her commitment to her work just made him love her more. Except he also worried about her when she looked as tired as she had been lately.

Closing himself in, he glanced at the racks of clothes that choked the hallway leading down to the pair of bedrooms. It was time to start putting his winter stuff into storage, and liberating his spring collection. Usually, he would be psyched for this annual ritual, and so would Fritz, but it was going to be a one-sided party on the butler’s part this year.

Butch was too distracted with the prophecy shit.

Walking out to the common area, he took off his jacket and laid it on the arm of the leather sofa. The cottage where he and V, and their mates, lived was the pebble to the mansion’s bolder, done in the same architectural style, but filling out a fraction of the square footage. It was also not decorated the same. The big house was like Tsarist Russia meeting Napoleonic France with a flash of Hogwarts. Butch and V’s crib? Try frat house crossed with bachelor pad: They had this couch, a foosball table, a TV the size of a soccer field, and V’s Four Toys, a.k.a. his computer setup. But at least here had been some refinements since their shellans had moved in. Courtesy of Marissa and Jane, gym bags were no longer coughing up jock straps and running shoes like they were choking from the smell, the issues of Sports Illustrated were in a tidy stack on the coffee table, and the half-eaten bags of Doritos and sour-cream-and-onion Ruffles were kept to a minimum. There were also no more Goose and Lag bottles laying on the floor like they were the ones passing out or ashtrays full of hand-rolled dead bodies or, even more to the point, BDSM shit that sometimes Butch hadn’t been sure was for the B, the D, the S, or the M.

In the galley kitchen, he threw out what was left of the bourbon in the sink and rinsed his glass out. Drying the inside with a paper towel, he poured himself three inches of Lag, and as he took a drink, he sloshed the hot stuff around his mouth to wash the taste of the Harper’s away. I.W.’s efforts at alcohol were an acceptable substitute. But when you wanted Sprite and you got seltzer, the disappointment inevitably soured your palate.

Glancing at the bottle of Lagavulin, he was surprised to find it was three-quarters of the way empty. He’d only opened it the day before and no one else drank the shit.

“You’re back.”

Butch was already looking up as Marissa spoke, his bonded male called to attention by her presence—and oh, what a presence it was. His mate was dressed in a silk nightgown that brushed the tops of her pretty bare feet, the color a blush pink that looked like it had been created especially for her and a select few tea roses. Her blond hair, which she had cut shoulder length a while ago, was growing out, at his urging, and the thick locks curled into spirals that were now down past her collarbones in front and her shoulder bones in back.

He took a moment to study her face. Word had always had it that hers was the greatest beauty in the species, and he knew this to be fact, not rumor. Ever since the first moment he had seen her at Darius’s old place—back when he’d been a human and had no idea what he was getting himself into—she had struck him stupid. Except for him, it was not her looks that created such a compelling, compulsive attraction. It was the soul behind the lovely eyes, the voice that came out of those perfect lips, the heartbeat behind the curves.

Her soul was what really did it for him.

“Are you okay?” she said as she came forward. “What’s wrong?”

The silk nightgown flowed behind her with the grace of contrails in the sky, and he was reminded, not for the first time, that he wished he brought better things to her life. He had a brutal job with little good news and much bloodshed, and then there was his side gig as the Omega’s buck-stops-here.

“Same ol’, same ol’.” They kissed as he held her close. “You know.”

“Not with the way you’re hitting that scotch.”