As the sound of unanswered ringing came through the landline, Blay held the receiver to his ear and sat down on the edge of his bed. This was weird. His parents should have been home this time of the night. It was so close to dawn -

"Hello?" his mother said, finally.

Blay exhaled long and slow, and shifted himself back against the headboard. Folding the bottom of his robe over his legs, he cleared his throat. "Hi, it's me."

The happiness that suffused the voice on the other end made him feel warm in his chest. "Blay! How are you! Let me get your father so he can hop on the other extension - "

"No, wait." He closed his eyes. "Let's just...talk. You and me."

"Are you okay?" He heard the sound of a chair streaking across a bare floor - and knew right where she was: at the oak table in her precious kitchen. "What's going on. You haven't been hurt, have you?"

Not on the inside. "I'm...okay."

"What is it?"

Blay rubbed his face with his free hand. He and his parents had always been close - ordinarily, there was nothing that he didn't talk to them about, and this breakup with Saxton was exactly the kind of thing he'd usually bring up: He was upset, confused, disappointed, a little depressed...all the usual emotional stuff he and his mom processed in a two-way street of phone calls.

As he stayed silent, however, he was reminded that there was, in fact, one thing he had never broached with them. One very big thing...

"Blay? You're scaring me."

"I'm okay."

"No, you're not."

True enough.

He supposed he hadn't come out to them with respect to his sexual orientation because your love life was not something most people shared with their parents. And maybe there was also a part of him, however illogical it was, that worried about whether or not they would look at him differently.

Take out the maybe.

After all, the glymera's policy on homosexuality was pretty clear: provided you were never overt about it, and you mated someone of the opposite sex like you were supposed to, you wouldn't be expelled for your perversion.

Yeah, 'cuz getting hitched to someone you weren't attracted to or in love with, and lying to them about sustained infidelity, was so much more honorable than the truth.

But God help you if you were a male and had a boyfriend on the up-and-up - as he had had for the last twelve months or so.

"I...ah, I broke up with someone."

Annnnd now it was crickets on his mother's side. "Really?" she said after a moment, like she was shocked, but trying to keep from showing it.

You think that's a surprise, guess what's coming next, Mom, he thought.

Because, holy shit, he was going to...

Wait, was he really going to do this now, over the phone? Shouldn't it be in person?

What exactly was the protocol here?

"Yes, I, ah..." He swallowed hard. "I've been in a relationship for most of the past year, actually."

"Oh...my." The hurt in her tone stung him. "I - we - your father and I never knew."

"I wasn't sure how to tell you."

"Do we know her? Or her family?"

He closed his eyes, his chest compressing. "Ah...you know the family. Yes."

"Well, I'm very sorry it didn't work out. Are you okay...? How did it end?"

"It just died, to be honest."

"Well, relationships are so very difficult. Oh, my love, my dearest heart - I can hear how sad you are. Would you like to come home and - "

"It was Saxton. Qhuinn's cousin."

There was a sharp inhale over the connection.

As his mother went utterly silent, Blay's arm started shaking so badly he could barely hold the phone.

"I...I, ah..." His mother swallowed hard. "I didn't know. That ah, you..."

He finished what she could not in his head: I didn't know that you are one of those people.

Like gays were social lepers.

Oh, hell. He shouldn't have said a thing. Not one fucking thing about this. Goddamn it, why did he have to blow his whole life up at the same time? Why couldn't his first real lover break up with him...and then he'd wait a couple of years, maybe a decade, before he came out to his parents and they shut him down? But noooooo, he had to -

"Is that why you've never talked about who you were with?" she asked. "Because..."

"Maybe. Yes..."

There was a sniffle. And then a hitched breath.

Her disappointment coming over the connection was too much to bear, the crushing weight settling on his chest and rendering it impossible to breathe.

"How could you - "

He rushed to cut her off, because he couldn't bear to have her sweet voice say the words. "Mahmen, I'm sorry. Look, I didn't mean it, okay? I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just - "

"What have I or we ever done - "

"Mahmen, stop. Stop." In the pause that followed, he thought about quoting her some Lady Gaga, and backing it up with a whole lot of it's-not-your-fault, you've-done-nothing-wrong-as-a-parent stuff. "Mahmen, I just - "

He broke down at that point, weeping as quietly as he could. The sense that in his mother's view, he had let down his family just by being who he was...was a failure of acceptance that he was never going to get over. He just wanted to live, honestly and out front, with no apology. Like everyone else. To love who he loved, be who he was...but society had a different standard, and as he had always feared, his parents were a part of that -

Dimly, he was aware of his mother speaking to him, and he struggled to pull it together and end the call -

"...to make you think you couldn't come to us with this? That it's something that would change how we feel about you?"

Blay blinked as his brain translated what he'd just heard into some language that made any kind of sense. "I'm sorry...? What?"

"Why have you...what did we do to make you feel that anything about you would make you somehow...diminished in our eyes?" She cleared her throat, as if she were gathering herself. "I love you. You are my heart beating outside of my chest. I don't care who you are mated to, or whether they have blond hair or black hair, blue or green eyes, male or female parts - as long as you are happy, that's all I worry about. I want for you what you want for yourself. I love you, Blaylock - I love you."

"What...are you saying..."

"I love you."

"Mahmen..." he croaked, tears forming again.

"I just wish you hadn't told me over the phone," she muttered. "I'd like to hug you right now."

He laughed in an ugly, sloppy way. "I didn't mean to. I mean, I didn't plan this. It just came out."

Funny choice of words, he thought.

"And I'm sorry," she said, "that things didn't work out with Saxton. He's a very nice gentlemale. Are you sure it's over?"

Blay scrubbed his face as reality recalibrated itself, the love he'd always known clearly still with him. In spite of the truth. Or maybe...because of it.

In moments like this, he felt like the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.

"Blay?"

"Sorry. Yeah, sorry. About Saxton..." He thought about what he'd done in that office down in the training center when he'd been alone. "Yes, Mahmen, it's over. I'm very sure."

"Okay, so here's what you have to do. You take some time and do some healing. You'll know when you've done enough. Then you have to be open to meeting somebody new. You are such a catch, you know."

And here she was, telling him to go meet another guy.

"Blay? Did you hear me? I don't want you to spend your life alone."

He mopped his face again. "You are the best mother on the planet, you know that."

"So when are you coming home to see me. I want to cook for you."

Blay relaxed into the pillows, in spite of the fact that his head was starting to ache - likely because even though he was alone, he'd still tried to hold things together during his crying jag. Likely also because he still hated where he was with Qhuinn. And he still missed Saxton in a way - because it was hard to sleep alone.

But this was good. This...honesty went a long way for him -

"Wait, wait." He sat upright off the pillows. "Listen, I don't want you to say anything to Dad."

"Dearest Virgin Scribe, why not?"

"I don't know. I'm nervous."

"Honey, he's not going to feel any differently than I do."

Yeah, but as the only born son and the last of the bloodline...and with the whole father/son thing..."Please. Let me tell him face-to-face." Oh, like that didn't make him want to throw up. "I should have done that with you. I'll come as soon as I'm off rotation - I don't want to put you in the position of keeping something from him - "

"Don't worry about that. This is your information - you have the right to share it with people whenever and however you want. I would appreciate your doing it soon, though. Under normal circumstances, your father and I tell each other everything."

"I promise."

There was a lull in the conversation. "So tell me about work - how's it going?"

He shook his head. "Mahmen, you don't want to hear about that."

"Sure I do."

"I don't want you to think my job is dangerous."

"Blaylock, son of my beloved hellren, exactly what kind of an idiot do you think I am?"

Blay laughed and then got serious. "Qhuinn flew an airplane tonight."

"Really? I didn't know he could fly."

Wasn't that the theme song for the evening. "He can't." Blay eased back again and crossed his feet at the ankles. "Zsadist got injured and we had to get him out of this remote location. Qhuinn decided to...I mean, you know how he is, he'll try anything."

"Very adventurous, a little wild. But what a lovely young male. Such a crying shame what his family did to him."

Blay fiddled with the tie on his robe. "You always did like him, didn't you. It's funny, I'd think a lot of parents wouldn't approve of him - on so many levels."

"That's because they buy into that whole tough-guy exterior. To me, it's what's inside that counts." She made a clucking sound, and he could just picture her shaking her head sadly. "You know, I'll never forget the night you brought him over for the first time. He was this tiny scrap of a pretrans, with that obvious imperfection that I'm sure he'd been given a hard time about at every turn. And yet even with that, he walked right up to me, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself. He met me directly in the eye, not in any kind of confrontation, but as if he wanted me to take a good look at him and throw him out then and there if I needed to." His mother exhaled a soft curse. "I would have taken him in that very night, you know. In a heartbeat. To hell with the glymera."

"You really, truly, totally are the best mother on earth."

Now she laughed. "And to think you say that without my even putting food in front of you."

"Well, lasagna would make you the best mother in the universe."

"I'll start boiling the noodles now."

As he closed his eyes, the return of the easy back-and-forth that had been the hallmark of their relationship seemed extra special.

"So tell me more about Qhuinn's bravery. I love to hear you talk about him, you get so animated."

Man, Blay refused to think about any of the whys on that one. He just launched into the tale, with some judicious editing so he didn't divulge anything the Brothers wouldn't want on the airways - not that his mother would ever say a thing to anybody.

"Well, we were out scoping this area, and..."

"Do you need aught else, sire?"

Qhuinn shook his head and chewed as fast as he could to clear his mouth. "No, thanks, Fritz."

"Mayhap some more roast beef?"

"Nah, thanks - oh, okay." He backed out of the way as more of the perfectly cooked meat hit his plate. "But I don't need - "

More potatoes. More squash.

"And I'll bring you another glass of milk," the butler said with a smile.

As the old doggen turned away, Qhuinn took a bracing breath and tucked in to his round two. He had a feeling that all of this food was Fritz's way of saying thank you, and it was odd - the more he ate, the more he started to feel hungry.

Come to think of it...when was the last time he'd had a meal?

As the butler delivered more moo, Qhuinn drank up like a good little boy.

Damn, he hadn't meant to waste this time in the kitchen. His original intention, when he'd come up from the clinic, had been to go right to Layla's room. Fritz, on the other hand, had had other ideas, and the old guy hadn't taken no for an answer - which suggested that it had been an order from on high. Like from Tohr, as head of the Brotherhood. Or the king himself.

So Qhuinn had given up and given in...and ended up sitting at this granite counter, getting stuffed tight as a pinata.

At least surrender was delicious, he thought a little later as he put his fork down and wiped his mouth.

"Here, sire, something for your dessert."

"Oh, thanks, but - " Well, well, well, what do we have here: a bowl of coffee ice cream with hot fudge sauce all over it - no whipped cream or nuts. Just the way he liked it. "You really didn't have to."

"It is your favorite, no?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah." And look, here was the silver spoon.

You know, it would be rude to let the stuff melt.

As Qhuinn started in on dessert, the stitches that Doc Jane had put in over his eyebrow began to throb under their bandage - and the pain reminded him of what a crazy-ass night it had been.

It seemed surreal to consider that an hour ago he'd been on the verge of death, dancing through the dark sky in a rattletrap piece-of-crap airplane he had no idea how to fly. Now? It was a case of Breyers' best. With hot fudge.

And to think he was actually relieved there were no nuts or whipped cream to shave off lest his palate be ruined. Because, yeah, that was a serious-ass problem right there.

As his adrenaline glands burped and a shot of anxiety trembled along every nerve in his body, he knew damn well the aftershocks were going to come and go. Kinda like whiplash for his nervous system.

But dealing with a case of post-disaster heebs was helluva lot better than going up in flames. Or down, as the case would have been.

After part two of his meal was finished, he did his best to help clean up before he went to see Layla, but Fritz got into a flutter about him even trying to carry his bowl and spoon anywhere near the sink. Giving in yet again, he headed out through the dining room, and paused to look around at the long table, picturing everyone sitting in their usual chairs.

All that mattered was that Z was back safely in the arms of his shellan - and no one else had been injured -

"Excuse me, sire," Fritz said as he hustled by. "The door."

Up ahead in the foyer, the doggen went to the security check-in screen. A second later, he sprang the lock on the interior of the vestibule.

And in came Saxton.

Qhuinn hung back. The last thing he wanted to do was tangle with that male right now. He was going to check on Layla, and then crash out -

The scent that drifted over to him wasn't right.

Frowning, he went over to the archway. Up ahead, his cousin chatted with Fritz for a moment and then started to walk toward the grand staircase.

Qhuinn inhaled deep, his nostrils flaring. Yeah, okay, that was Saxton's fancy cologne...but there was another smell mingling with it. Another cologne was all over the male.

It was not Blay's. Or anything the fighter would wear.

And then there was also the unmistakable scent of sex....

There was no conscious thought going on as Qhuinn marched out into the open and barked, "Where you been."

His cousin halted. Looked over his shoulder. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me." On closer goddamn inspection, it was really frickin' obvious what the guy had been up to. His lips were red and there was a flush on his cheeks that Qhuinn was willing to bet had jack shit to do with the cold weather. "Where the fuck you been."

"I don't believe that's any of your business, cousin."

Qhuinn stalked over the mosaic floor, not stopping until his shitkickers were steel-toed to the guy's pretty loafers. "You fucking slut."

Saxton had the nerve to look bored. "No offense, dearest relation of mine, but I don't have time for this."

The guy pivoted around -

Qhuinn snapped a hand out and grabbed an arm. With a yank, he brought them nose-to-nose again. And shit, the stank on the guy made him sick to his fucking stomach.

"Blay is out risking his life in the war - and you're fucking some random behind his back? Real classy, cocksucker - "

"Qhuinn, this is not your concern - "

Saxton tried to shove him off. Not a good idea. Before Qhuinn knew what he was doing, he locked his palms around the male's throat.

"How fucking dare you," he said with his fangs fully bared.

Saxton slapped both his hands on Qhuinn's wrists and tried to get free, jerking, pulling, getting absolutely nowhere. "You're...choking...me...."

"I should kill you right here, right now," Qhuinn growled. "How the fuck could you do that to him? He's in love with you - "

"Qhuinn..." The strangled voice grew thinner and thinner. "Qh - "

The thought of everything his cousin had, and everything the guy wasn't taking care of, gave him super-strength, and he channeled it right into his hands. "What the hell else you need, asshole? You think some strange is gonna be better than what you've got in your bed?"

The force of his onslaught started to push Saxton backward, the guy's shoes squeaking on the smooth floor as Qhuinn's shitkickers drove both of them on. Things halted when Saxton's shoulders slammed into the staircase's huge bannister.

"You fucking slut - "

Someone shouted. So did someone else.

And then there was a shitload of fast footfalls coming from different directions, followed by a bunch of people pulling at his arms.

Whatever. He just kept his eyes and his hands locked, the fury in his gut turning him into a bulldog that would...

Not...

Let...

Go...

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