Page 43 of Strays
My brain’s still sluggish, but I know we should be hungry. Strangely, not even Jay says a word about food. I’m a little worried that Jo has eaten nothing since breakfast, but she’s so limp in Shane’s arms that we just take her back to the housing unit and curl up in the nest again.
I think about how she’s still in her dress, and we’re still in our formal clothes, and whether we should try to get her into something more comfortable, but before I can say anything to my brothers, I drift off.
It doesn’t last. I wake with a start, gripped by an urgent, irrational need to check on her. I shift, easing some of Jay’s weight off me until I can crawl out of the nest and flick the light on.
When I come back, Shane and Jay have already shifted closer to Jo in their sleep, surrounding her. I nudge for space, waking both of them in the process. Jo stirs a little, even cracks her eyes open, but she’s asleep again in seconds.
I stare at her without really knowing what I’m looking for. When I find nothing wrong, exhaustion slams back into me. I wedge myself back in between her and Jay, and the moment I’ve got her in my arms again, I pass out, lights still on.
What feels like minutes later, I’m waking up again. Shane’s pushing my arms and legs away from her, shifting me so he can check on her himself. A protest bubbles up somewhere in the fog of sleep, but it dies the second I see the look of wild panic on his face.
He checks her. Finds nothing wrong. Falls asleep again.
The next time I wake, it’s still dark outside. This time, it’s Jay crawling over me to get to Jo, and I know it’s his turn to be hit with the same weird need. I move aside, letting him do what he has to. Once he’s satisfied, he wraps his arms around her and sleeps again.
When I open my eyes again, sunlight is spilling through the window, and the first thing I hear is Jo’s voice: “Finally!”
She’s on the couch, Shane’s phone in her hand. The excitement in her voice makes it clear that she’s been waiting for us to wake up for a while.
I sit up and smile at her as I lounge there for a second. When I make my way to the couch, my intention is to give her a kiss on the forehead, but she tilts her face up toward me, inviting more. A warm bubble of happiness rises in my chest as I lean down and kiss her mouth.
“Morning,” I murmur, my voice still rough from sleep. “How are you feeling?”
“Morning,” she answers, smiling as I settle beside her and pull my legs up. “I feel crazy good. Not even a little pain.”
I brush her hair back to check my bite mark, my pulse quickening at the sight of it. The deep punctures are already closed over with red scabs. The cut on her arm looks better too, the skin nearly the same color as the rest of her, the angry redness gone.
I spot my brothers’ marks on her forearms, also sealed with scabs. I touch one gently, and when she doesn’t flinch, my chest loosens. She’s not just saying it, she really isn’t hurting.
“I’m looking at some places for rent in Milestone,” she says. “It’s halfway between Great Sky and Bridgeport, so I think it could be a really good choice for us. I’ve seen a few listings already, but I have no idea what our budget is.”
I lean over and wrap her in a hug. She’s made it very clear she’s not the housewife type, and that’s fine by me, but I can’t help the warmth that spreads through my chest seeing her step into something that, traditionally, has always been a nyra’s role in a pack: managing the family finances.
I bury my face in her hair and inhale her scent before getting up and crossing the room. I grab the file Deputy Commander Julius Eneas gave us and flip through it until I find the page I’m looking for. I return to the couch and hand it to her.
“Base pay, hazard pay… it’s all listed,” I tell her. “We also get a ten-thousand-dollar relocation grant. And between the three of us, we’ve got a little over twenty-six grand saved up. Hopefully enough to cover aegis-sized furniture.”
Right now, I feel proud. As little as this might be to some people, it’s a hell of a lot more than we’ve ever had. We won’t have to take her to live in a barely furnished, shitty apartment like the one we had in Greenster. With Special Ops paychecks, we can give her something better.
She scans the paper with quick, focused eyes. “Wow. That’s actually pretty impressive. I think we can afford a place in the Historic District.”
Pride swells bigger in my chest.
“The relocation grant can cover the rental deposit,” she says, still flipping through the numbers. “And I don’t know exactly how much aegis-sized furniture costs, but with this, I’m sure we can figure something out.”
She sets the paper down and picks the phone back up. “The Historic District is beautiful; I’ve got to show you.”
The place she’s showing me on the phone looks like a dream. A two-story colonial with soft gray siding and white trim, a little porch with hanging planters, and a perfect square of green lawn out front. Real grass, not crabgrass or half-dead patches. And it has one of those white wooden fences, not for security, just to look nice.
I lean closer, squinting as she swipes through the photos. The living room has a fireplace. Like, a real one. The kitchen has windows over the sink, brighttile, long counters. Upstairs, there’s this big open hallway, tall windows in every room, and in one photo, I spot a treehouse through the glass. A whole-ass treehouse in the backyard.
“Holy shit,” I murmur.
Onthe Prime Variant and the Untapped Potential of Nyra-Triggered Progression
Excerpt from Emergent Divergence: The Evolutionary Path of Homo Gregalis by Dr. Steve Bureau, Ph.D. (4th ed., West Kempton Institute Press)
The physiological transformation of aegis bonded to a Prime nyra is striking. Documented changes include extreme musculoskeletal growth, with heights often exceeding 7 feet (2.13 m) and strength metrics in the 99.99th percentile of measured force output.
