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“I’m mad at you,” Ezra told him, “or maybe more frustrated with you than mad, but I still love you. You’re my brother — my twin. Sometimes it feels as if we share the same soul, other times we’re two individual people with closely bonded souls. I don’t like being mad at you.”

“I don’t like it when you’re mad at me. How can a raccoon be a pet? It lives outside. It was wild.” He considered what he’d felt again and repeated. “Iknowit was wild.”

“Clive sits outside at night and watches it bring its food to the pool and wash it,” Dev told him. “He named it Trash Panda, and shortened it to Tee-Panda, which has been shortened to T-Pan. He talks to it, and has been slowly moving closer and closer to the pool, and T-Pan lets him. He looks forward to being able to, eventually, hand feed T-Pan. It’s part of how he keeps such tight control on his inner honey badger. If you’d killed and eaten the raccoon, you and your brother might have had to go back to the Concilio, because I don’t think we’d have been able to keep you alive while living in the same coterie. Short term, sure, but six months from now when the rest of us had forgotten? Maybe not.I would’ve done everything in my power to keep you here, but I don’t know for certain I’d have been able to.”

The reality of what he’d almost done hit him harder than the lines, the humbler, and the rice had. He’d very nearly fucked up their chance of having alife.

He turned to Ezra, wrapped his arms around his brother, and squeezed him tight. “Fuck, Eazie. I’m sorry. I almost royally fucked us up.”

“Being sorry isn’t good enough, Elijah. You have to do better. Iwantthis chance Master Brooke is offering us, and Master Dev is trying to walk us through.”

“I do too, but it’s damned scary,” Elijah admitted.

“Do you know what I realized? We’re two people, ’Lijah. If I want total freedom and you need a handler who only gives you partial freedom, that’s okay. You can be happy sitting in a room with your art, I think, so long as regular sex is part of it, but I need to go out into the world and do something. I don’t know what thatsomethingis yet, but I know I need to do it. But that’s okay, because when I come home at night, or in the morning, you’ll still be here. I can’t live my life without you, but that doesn’t mean we have to do everything together. We’re different men, Elijah.”

Elijah didn’t want to cry in front of Genie and Dev, but the grief, anxiety, and relief poured out of his gut and his chest in the form of wracking tears streaming from his eyes.

And all three of them held him while he cried himself nearly sick.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Genie used her palm print, the middle five numbers of her phone number, and then spoke a code phrase to open the door going outside of Dev’s home, which he had been clear, many times, is owned by Brooke, though it’s his primary residence.

He’d had to get Brooke’s clearance to put her into the security system, but she’d told him she would only feel comfortable spending her off days with him if she could come and go as she pleased. She didn’t like knowing she needed Dev to open the doors, and if he didn’t, she was trapped underground with him in a vampire’s stronghold.

She held no illusions that he couldn’t rescind that permission before she could make it upstairs and out the door, but the fact she had the ability made her feel better.

She wandered the property and came upon a beautiful man-made lake. Someone had put an earthen dam on a fairly good-sized stream to create it, and she made a note to look to see how the fencing worked to keep people and animals out — and in — where the stream entered and exited the property. But first, she climbed onto a large boulder and stretched out in the sunshine. If she was going to live mostly underground, she was going to need to make sure she spent plenty of time outside. This property looked like it was all acreage, with no buildings on it, and Brooke probably wanted to keep it looking that way. Maybe she could talk them into letting her build a treehouse, though. Something so she could sleep outside in the trees in her human form — that had always been a hope of hers, something to eventually have once she bought her own home.

Genie realized she was thinking long-term, as if she might still be here come spring, and she breathed in the sunshine and concentrated on soaking it in. Her energy was still a little wonky, but she had control of it now, and she felt how the sunshine seemed to further energize her.

Her owl preferred the twilight time, not daylight and not full-on-dark. As a human she was fine with either night or day, so she often took the night shift, both because it was easier to get the days she preferred to work, and because most hospitals paid a few dollars more an hour for the night shift.

But she was going to have to take the time to come aboveground in the sunlight more often, because this was nice.

Two of the common rooms on the topmost floor had sunshine piped in, somehow. Dev said it was done with mirrors, but she didn’t think all the sun’s rays got reflected exactly right. Still, it was better than artificial light, even if the light bulbs claimed to be full spectrum. Since they didn’t tan or burn you, clearly they didn’t mimicallof what the sun could offer. Nothing compared to the real thing while lounging on a rock in a wooded sanctuary.

She scented the bear shifter before he reached her, but she didn’t move. Remy was Dev’s close friend, and if she couldn’t trust Dev’s friends then she had no business considering living here, or even spending the three or four days a week she’d agreed to.

“My bear likes this rock, too. Brooke allows a local tiger shifter access to the property, and her scent almost always covers the rock after she’s been here.”

“I scented lots of cats, two bears, several snakes, and a mammal I can’t put a finger on. I think I’ve scented him in the kitchen area, too.”

“Sloth. He’s a gentle soul. Never gets in a hurry in either of his forms, but he’s a good worker. I understand Brooke feedsfrom him when she’s angry and needs to calm down, or when she’s anxious and wishes for peace. There’s a schedule for the property, so we make sure we don’t have a sloth and a tigerchangingand roaming the property at the same time. It’s a good idea to check it before coming out as a human. No one’s using it now, we’re fine, but I don’t know how much Dev told you.”

“He explained it when he gave me access to unlock the doors. Do you want the rock for a while? Should I find another place?”

“No, and I’ll leave you in peace in a moment, but I wanted to…” he sighed. “I guess I wanted to stick my nose in and say a few things. Dev doesn’t fall for people. He’s strong all the way through — physically, mentally, emotionally. He and Julien are kind of our rocks. Always there, always strong, always logical and unemotional. You’ve thrown our sturdy Dev into a bit of turmoil. I doubt most in the coterie have noticed, but I can see it.”

“You don’t think I’m good for him?”

“On the contrary, I think you’ve awakened a part of him he long ago decided he didn’t need. He was wrong about that, but he’s lived without letting anyone get too terribly close for a long time. He has an emotional connection with the people he’s responsible for, but that’s different. He loves Clive and Gus as if they were his children, and in a way, they are. It should be the same with the new pumas, but once you came into his life and saw them as young men who haven’t grown up yet, rather than former slaves who need to be taught, I believe your vision of them has leaked a little bit on him — not so much he won’t be able to train them, but enough he canseethem.”

“I’m a nurse. I won’t mind being on call to help the humans and shifters in the coterie, but I’m never going to give up working in a hospital. I tried working for a doctor once, but that isn’t for me. I do best on a hospital floor, or in the ER.”

“Dev knows this, as does Brooke. If you agree to be on call when not at the hospital, you’ll have wages deposited into your account monthly for your on-call status, and bonuses for any work you do. Brooke believes in paying her people more than the going rate, but mainly because she only hires the best, and that means they’re worth more than the standard wages.

“Dev asked my advice on how to help you understand Brooke, and he told me what happened. He’s worried you’ll run because you won’t want to be under her demesne.”