Page 13 of Legacy of Chaos

“I’m fine,” he gritted, his body reacting to her breathy words and warm heat even as his mind screamed to get away. “I’m sorry I bothered you.” His hand shook so badly that he barely managed to pop the cap off the injector.

“Stryke—”

“Go!”

With an angry, frustrated snarl, he jabbed the needle into his thigh and flopped back against the couch. Relief came quickly as the solution streamed through his veins to all the parts of his body that needed the chemical hit an orgasm would normally provide.

Masumi’s curses echoed in his ear as she dematerialized back into her vase. She was pissed, and he couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t worried about her getting what she needed to survive, though. Her vase’s twin, her second home, resided at the compound shared by his brothers Rade and Blade, and his cousins Mace and Sabre. Between the four males, she got a lot ofaction, and they didn’t have to waste time looking for partners several times a day.

Not that all of them considered the pursuit of females wasted time. Mace definitely enjoyed the hunt for sex. According to Masumi, he only summoned her a couple of times a week, and half the time when he did, it was to join him and another female.

Snow swirled against the windows, giving him something besides Masumi to focus on as the meds took effect. He breathed a sigh of relief as his blood shot back up to his brain, and he reached functional status again.

Damn. Those injections were a miracle.

Maybe Eidolon’s prognosis was wrong. Perhaps the lab had gotten Stryke’s blood mixed up with someone else’s.

And maybe he was a fucking idiot in denial.

His uncle wasn’t one to screw up. Andsomethinghad caused the symptoms that had forced Stryke to seek medical help. So, yeah, it was certainly possible that the injections were harming him, but his pride had prevented him from conceding the possibility to Eidolon.

Whatever. It was a problem to solve. And Stryke loved to solve problems because he was really, really good at it.

Goal in mind, his thoughts spinning with theories and calculations, he showered, threw on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and headed to his private laboratory. Before he got there, he stopped in the kitchen to grab a ham sandwich—just bread and meat. Condiments were a waste of time, and food was nothing more than fuel. Taste wasn’t a consideration.

The hidden panel in his living room slid open at his approach, revealing a metal staircase. He took the steps two at a time and hit the bottom, landing with a bounce.

He loved it down here. It was a space full of high-tech equipment where he could do anything he wanted withoutscrutiny or explanation. Here, he created and destroyed. Invented and tested. Here, he was a god.

He was a god at StryTech, too, but there were no interruptions here, and he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone.

Inhaling the comforting scents of sterile cleaners, chemical concoctions, and cedar chips, he walked past whiteboards covered in hastily scrawled equations, a bank of computers, and a rat in an enormous cage.

“Hey, Squeaker.” He took a peanut from the bowl next to the cage and tossed it to the sleek albino rodent. “No mazes for you today.”

The rat, the last survivor of the batch of twenty rats he’d rescued from StryTech’s labs, absconded with the legume into the little cardboard cave he’d made for himself. Squeaker was the only one Stryke had named, and even then, he hadn’t done it until the rat was the only one left after the others had died of old age.

But this guy kept on keeping on, aided by one of StryTech’s anti-aging test formulas and Stryke’s ability to optimize bodily functions.

He sank into one of the computer chairs and brought up the formula for his sex inhibitor. Maybe he could make it safer if he adjusted or tweaked it a little.

“None of these inhibitors, not even mine, are meant for regular use,”Eidolon had said before they hung up.“Orgasms produce chemicals in our bodies that keep us alive. The inhibitors mimic the chemicals but can’t completely replicate them. Without regular sex to fill in the gaps, your body will break down.”

“Is it reversible?”

“Maybe. But we won’t know until you stop using them and give your body a chance to heal.”

“Can’t you heal me?”

“Not from this. I can’t replicate the chemicals either.”

Maybe his uncle couldn’t replicate them, but Stryke could. He could try, anyway. And there was no reason to think he’d fail. He rarely failed at anything.

You failed your brother.

Yes, he had. And because of that, he’d dedicated himself to protecting others from evil demons. He’d built an empire and had become the richest, most notorious person on the planet. He was as powerful as any president, king, or supreme leader of any country in the human realm.

And all it had cost him was his entire family.

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