Page 25 of Chained
That was horrifying to consider. It would be worse than being weak, than being bad. Worse even than biting the boss, which had been terrible indeed. Edge belonged to the boss. The boss was his master, his god. You don’t kill your own god.
Yet the idea remained, tempting in its awfulness. Like chewing at a scab until it bled.
Edge shifted positions. He stood, turned around a few times, and lay down again. He pawed at his bed to rearrange it. And then, when sleep continued to elude him, he endured the painful shift back to human form and sat against the bars of his cage, knees drawn to his chest. The metal hurt his battered back, but that didn’t seem to matter right now.
“Do you think it’s hard to shoot a gun?”
Holt swung his head to stare at him.
“Maybe the shooting part is easy, but the aiming?” Edge mused. “I don’t know about that.”
Uttering a heavy sigh, Holt stood, pawed off the TV, and shifted. It was painful to watch. For some reason, he’d always found shifting more difficult than his brothers, and he rarely did it. He claimed to be more comfortable in dog form. But it was a lot easier to have a conversation with a human-shaped mouth and vocal cords.
Holt was taller than Edge and even more muscular. In man form, his head was shorn bald because human hair annoyed him. He had a long white scar across one side of his chest, a souvenir from when they were young and being trained to fight with knives. Butch had lunged too enthusiastically and Holt had been slightly too slow in withdrawing.
Now Holt smoothed a palm over his scalp as if to make sure it met his satisfaction, then sat on the dog bed in his cage. “We don’t need guns. We have teeth.” He had a rumbly voice that sounded like a growl even when he wasn’t angry.
“I know.” Edge rested his head on his knees.
“We’d take the beatings for you if we could.”
“I know that too. But you’re not weak like me.”
“You’re not weak.”
Edge didn’t bother to argue. He closed his eyes instead. “I’m afraid.”
“Of beatings? You can withstand them.”
“Not that. Someday I’ll end up like Butch.”
Holt snarled. “Don’t say that!”
Also not worth an argument, at least when Edge had so little energy. He softened his voice. “Do you sometimes wish for… more?”
“What kind of more?”
“A mate?” Unlike Edge, Holt and Duke were attracted to women, but they very rarely had physical access to them. A few times a year, when the boss was feeling especially pleased with them, he brought in prostitutes. But that was no more a real relationship than when the boss loaned Edge to his prospects and friends.
“We don’t need mates.”
“No. But do you want one?” Edge lifted his head to look at his brother.
Holt’s gaze went wistful and faraway before hardening again. “Doesn’t matter. Not why we’re here.”
“But is that right? Why shouldn’t we have… more than this?” He waved his arms to indicate the spartan surroundings of the kennel. The movement made his wounds hurt.
“Those are questions that will earn you beatings.”
“I should stop questioning, then, and serve in silence.”
“Serve with strength and dignity. What other option do we have?”
Edge almost told him about the Bureau, but what would be the point? Holt would only be angry that Edge had withheld information from the boss. He’d probably tell the boss himself. Edge sighed and rested his head again.
“Sleep,” Holt said. “Heal. Tomorrow I’ll charm the cook into giving us something good.”
“Do you think maybe we could get a radio?” Now that he’d learned some things about music, he wanted to listen to it.
