Especially not a chaperone who happened to be the King’s First Adviser.

To see nearly sixty people she didn’t recognize had been a surprise. Then again, the application had made it clear that anyone was allowed to join the program, so there were a lot of civilians. Actually, it looked as if it was all civilians and the male/female ratio was, like, ten to one.

But at least her sex was allowed.

Refocusing, Paradise shifted in her seat and made sure her elbow didn’t disturb the male who was sitting next to her. Other than exchanging names—his was Axe—they hadn’t said anything, and his brooding silence fit his image completely: The male had killer written all over him, with his black spiked hair, those black piercings on one side of his face, and that tattoo of something evil running vertically up half of his neck.

If her father knew she was thisclose to a male like that? They’d have to put Abalone on life support.

And this was exactly why she’d wanted to do the program. It was time to break out of the restrictions of her station—and cut the hothouse flower crap. If working around the King had taught her anything, it was that no matter what class you were in, tragedy didn’t discriminate, justice could always be served, and nobody got out of this life alive.

“So, you’re really going to take it this far.”

Paradise looked into the black glass of the window beside her. Reflected in the mirror-like surface, Princeps Peyton, first blooded son of Peythone, was just as she remembered: classically handsome, with those intense blue eyes and his thick blond hair brushed straight back from his forehead. He was wearing his signature rimless, sapphire-tinted sunglasses to hide the fact that he was probably high, and his right-off-the-yacht clothes were tailor-made for his muscled body. With an aristocratic voice that had a rasp, and a brain that was somehow able to counter-act all that THC, he was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the glymera, part Great Gatsby, part Jack Sparrow.

As she breathed in, she could smell his cologne and a hint of smoke.

“How are you, Peyton,” she muttered.

“You’d know if you answered your damn phone.”

Paradise rolled her eyes. Even though the pair of them had only ever been friends, the bastard was wholly irresistible to females. And one of his problems, among many, was the fact that he knew it.

“Hello?” he demanded.

Paradise turned and faced him. “I don’t have a lot to say to you. Which, considering you reduced me to nothing but a pair of ovaries for breeding, shouldn’t be a big surprise. I don’t have much to offer other than that, right?”

“Will you excuse us?” he said to the male sitting next to her.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Axe, the tough guy, slipped out as if he were getting away from a stink bomb. Or a squeaky female dressed in pink ribbons and bows.

Peyton sat down. “I’ve apologized. At least to your phone. What more do you want me to do?”

She shook her head, thinking of that first year after the raids. So many of her kind had been killed by the Lessening Society during that horrible assault on the race, and those who had been lucky enough to survive had left Caldwell, retreating to safe houses outside of town, out of state, out of New England.

Peyton had gone south with his blood. She’d gone west with her father. And the two of them had spent countless, sleepless days talking on the phone just to keep sane and process the fear, the sadness, the horror, the losses. Over time, he had become someone she touched base with not just once a night, but all throughout the endless twenty-four-hour cycles of days, weeks, months.

He had become her family.

Of course, if times had been remotely normal, they wouldn’t have gotten so close—especially not if the contact had been in person. As an unmated female from a Founding Family, she wouldn’t have been allowed to fraternize so freely with any unmated male without a chaperone.

“You know all those hours we spent on the phone?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I felt like you had my back. You didn’t judge me if I was scared or weak or nervous. You were just … this voice on the other end of the connection that kept me sane. You were sometimes the only reason I made it to nightfall.” She shook her head. “And then this comes up, and you body-slam me with the glymera bullcrap—”

“Now hold on—”

“You did. You laughed at me and told me I couldn’t do this.” She clamped a hold on his mouth, shutting him up. “Just stop talking, okay? Let me get this all out. Now, you might be right: I might fail out of the program. Fine, I’ll fall on my butt—but I’m allowed to be here on this bus, and I have the same shot that everyone else does. And you of all people, who’s made fun of every one of the idiot society females your family’s tried to set you up with, who’s told me you think the festivals are stupid, who’s rejected the business expectations your father put on you—you were the last person I thought would ever go old-school on me.”

He sat back and stared at her through those blue-tinted lenses. “Are you done now? You off your soapbox?”

“FYI, being a smart-ass is really going to help you here.”

“Just want to know if you’re ready to put this feminist shit aside and actually listen to me.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“You haven’t once given me a chance to explain. You’re too busy filling in my side of things with all this free-the-nipple crap. Why bother letting the other person in on the conversation when you’re having such a great time being judgmental and superior? I never thought you were this way.”