Page 69 of Legacy of Chaos

“Don’t.” He shook his head. His heavily divided brain was starting to hurt. “I’m barely keeping it together as it is.”

Her hand came down on his back, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Instinctively, he shouldered her away, but she moved with him, and when she touched him again, her touch was firmer.

Comforting.

Beneath her fingers, his skin trembled. He wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to baring his soul. Or being on the receiving end of compassion. Or being touched.

He didn’t know what to do. He only knew his system was on overload, shifting up into fight or flight.

Stop running away.

Blade’s words rang through Stryke’s head like one of the punches that had followed.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was,” he blurted angrily. “I didn’t want to watch the twins that day. I missed a lecture on quantum inversion theorybecause of it, and I was pissed. So pissed that I didn’t plan for my needs well.”

“You didn’t have an injection?”

He swallowed the lump of shame in his throat. “I should have asked Blade or Sabre for one. But the popcorn stand girl was cute, and I hadn’t learned to control my urges yet.”

The first year after transition wasn’t easy. Eidolon said it was similar to a human teen going through puberty, except condensed into one year and ten times more intense. Sexual needs raged, wiping away rational thought and logic. But that was no excuse for what he’d done.

And failed to do.

“I was doing the human when the attack started…my fucking pants were down, and I stumbled. I didn’t get there in time.” His gut ached, and his heart clenched as the memories slammed into him like Blade’s fists but far more painful. “Then, afterward…I don’t know. A lot of it’s a blur.”

Unfortunately, a blurry nightmare was still a nightmare. He might not remember much of the immediate hours that followed, but there were a few things he’d never forget. That left him sick and riddled with guilt.

His mom’s soul-deep, gut-wrenching screams when she got the news stuck with him. He recalled how his father had, for months, been a mere shadow of the vibrant, larger-than-life male Stryke had known. Friends and family had been sober and sad, the very opposite of the lively, close-knit community they’d been for as long as Stryke could remember.

Crux had taken it the hardest. He’d shut down for weeks, curled into a fetal position on his bed, his blank stare focused on the wall. The entire family had taken turns bringing him food and liquids, which he’d eaten like a zombie before curling up again.

Blade had turned angry; his pain honed into a white-hot spear of rage that was always pointed at Stryke.

And then there was Rade. The brother who had been bereft of emotion since the day he was returned after being kidnapped by a vengeful demon as an infant. He hadn’t shown any feelings, but his red-rimmed eyes had said it all. Not that they’d needed to. Stryke had felt the depth of his agony, so buried that it could barely even be labeled a smolder. But every once in a while, a burst of heart-wrenching suffering would escape Rade and take Stryke to his knees.

That was when he’d found Quillax. Stryke had practically begged the male to find a way to sever the connection he had with his brothers. He couldn’t handle his pain, let alone theirs. And for the good of them all, he’d cut his thread and freed them from everything he felt.

Cyan squeezed his arm. “So, you’ve just been living with all of that alone? For all these years?”

“I’ve had my work. It’s the most important thing. Without it, Chaos’s death means nothing.”

“That’s why you create the things you do,” she mused. “Weapons and traps and detectors. Now, it all makes sense.”

“Glad I could help you solve the puzzle.”

She didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. “Yes, and…oh.”

“Oh, what?”

“Sex,” she breathed. “You associate what happened to Chaos with sex. That’s why you try to avoid it. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Only partly. “I avoid it because it’s a waste of my time.”

She offered a thoughtful nod. “I can understand why you’d think that. But I still think I’m right. I saw you with Masumi. You chose an injection instead. I saw you in the storm with the demons, and you damned near chose to die out there with them rather than have sex with me. And then when we finally did do it, you ran out of there like you were on fire.”

“I needed to get to work,” he said, knowing it was both the truth…and lame.

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