Page 38 of Almost Midnight

And yeah, Nick felt like absolute shit about that.

Guilt didn’t even begin to cover it.

And that hadn’t even been the end of Nick’s own night.

Nick ended up in an interrogation cell of his own, naked, beaten up by Leash agents, everything he said or did recorded in detail by the human racial authorities. He’d spent the rest of that night and most of the following day being questioned and threatened and hit with electric prods as they asked him about Walker and Wynter and his connections to Brick and the White Death. He’d been asked why he called Walker for help when the police and the H.R.A. were on their way. He’d been asked where Brick was, and the location of White Death hideouts.

Nick hadn’t told them shit.

Then again, he didn’t know very much.

He didn’t know anything at all about Walker’s political work, in particular, or his ties to “radical” race-equality organizations in Europe and North America.

He didn’t know where Brick was.

He didn’t know the current location of the White Death lair; Brick tended to change those every few months, if not more frequently.

Eventually, Lara must have intervened. That, or they decided Nick really didn’t know anything, that it was too much bother to keep him.

Fuck, who was he kidding?

Lara probably intervened.

He’d been summoned to her Phoenix Tower right after they released him, and reminded, in no uncertain terms, that he had no rights, other than the ones Lara St. Maarten and Archangel deigned to give him. That included his right to work, to live outside a prison, to live with his mate, or to live anywhere at all, for that matter.

His only other option was to re-join the White Death.

That would mean being a different kind of slave.

Now he was here, back on the job for all of his human employers.

He’d made Farlucci a shit-ton of credits beating up another of his kind, now he was hunting down murderers for the N.Y.P.D., and tomorrow he would be back on the payroll for Archangel. Everything was supposed to be back to normal. Everything was supposed to be hunky-dory, with Nick once more leashed and obedient, a good boy who did what he was told and didn’t complain… working for humans who would just as soon shoot him as look at him.

Nick was supposed to be cool with that.

He was supposed to just smile and shrug that they’d taken his life away, his choice, any semblance of his dignity.

He was supposed to justacceptthe fact that Lara St. Maarten torpedoed his one chance to get off this rock, to go home, all so she wouldn’t lose access to her favorite weapons: two fuckingkidswho’d never gotten a break, either.

It wasn’t just Nick who was a slave again.

It was all of them.

And Morley was giving him grief about his fuckingdemeanor?

“I’m peachy,” Nick said, deadpan.

Morley didn’t smile. Rather, his faint frown deepened.

“Go home,” the old man said, blunt. “You’ve had it for tonight.”

Nick stared at him. “What?”

Morley stared back, unmoved.

“You’re done,” he repeated. “And I can tell by that attitude of yours right now, you’re not going to be able to talk about where you’re at, so you should probably just go surf or box or do something else to work through some of that fucking anger you’re stewing in.” James shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his long coat. “Go on. We don’t need a bloodhound to knock on doors. I’ll get Charlie out here for that.”

“Charlie shouldn’t have to––”

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