Page 25 of Bully for Sale
“No.” Ezer rose from his seat with shaking legs, walked out of his father’s study, and passed the large room where his brothers wrestled over the video game remote controls.
Rodan’s squeaky voice rose in defiance, “It’s my turn!” But Shan and Flo overrode him with low laughs. Yissen danced and sang along to the video game theme song. No one noticed Ezer.
The servants ducked by him in the hallway with their heads down, cheeks aflame, and a certain scuttle to their walk that gave away they knew more than Ezer himself did about what was happening in his home.
He’d no sooner thrown open the door to his bedroom than one of his father’s men showed up in the doorway. “I’m here to help you pack your things. Nothing of value. Leave the laptop, phone, and clothing.”
Ezer stared at the man, trying to understand what was happening. He picked up his bookbag, emptied it of his school things, and stuffed three pairs of jeans and a handful of random T-shirts inside. He pulled on his hoodie and hitched the bag over his shoulder.
“This way,” the man said. His face was set like stone, no reaction showing at all. Ezer wanted to ask if he understood what was happening, if he knew why, but he couldn’t get his mind around any of it. He was being kicked out of his home. This was how Da must have felt when Father announced he had to go. It had been equally out of the blue. He’d fought. There’d been violence. Blood.
Ezer put his shoulders back. He wasn’t going to fight. He knew he couldn’t win.
He was guided out to the car and put into the backseat. No goodbyes for his brothers. In part because he didn’t believe this was forever, and in part because he didn’t want to see their faces. If they cried, he couldn’t handle it, and if they didn’t…well, he couldn’t handle that either.
An hour later, after negotiating evening traffic in Wellport through to Roughs Neck, the car pulled up outside of Amos’s apartment. Ezer got out and took the stairs to his da’s apartment. He knocked on the door, and it swung open.
Amos took one long look at him, sighed, and gestured for him to come in.
Chapter Eight
In an attemptto distract himself from his father’s mad scheme, Ned had agreed to go with Braden and Finch to Roughs Neck in search of a new supplier for Bright’s powder. The one they’d been buying from before had been busted the night after they’d left and the entire operation shut down.
The new supplier Finch had uncovered from some source in his father’s household—a beta servant whom Finch had bribed—lived in Amos’s building, and while returning to the scene of the crime yet again was awkward, Ned hadn’t thought he’d see Amos, or Ezer for that matter.
So far he hadn’t.
Inside the supplier’s apartment, Ned stood with his arms over his chest, hoping nothing exploded until he’d left the building. Burners were turned up high, chemicals and corrosive liquids spilled everywhere, and there were far too many cats running around in the mess for Ned’s liking. The supplier, a mustachioed guy named Guffin, sat at a table with various piles of powder, while his pal, a chemist hopefully, worked with the bubbling, burning pots, pans, and glass tubes. A cat was balanced on his shoulder, and two more perched at the end of the long counter.
Another cat slipped by Ned’s ankles where he stood close to the door, eager to escape, and questioning his life choices. He should have stayed home and worked out his anxiety in the weight room with Earl. Then he could have spilled his guts to the old man, received his wisdom, and avoided this shit show altogether.
But he hadn’t.
Because if there was one thing he’d figured out about himself in the last year, it was that he was incapable of not getting himself into trouble. Just caring about Ezer had placed them both in a dangerous position, and he hadn’t done anything other than trynotto show how Ezer’s eyes made him feel. He’d even gone so far as to act as if he didn’t care so much, hoping to put a stop to the bullying from Braden and Finch. But it hadn’t worked.
The supplier held up two baggies of powder. Ned dreaded the moment when Braden and Finch took their first hit of this crappy stuff. The source looked pretty sketchy, and he wouldn’t trust it up his own nose. Not that they tried to get him to use it anymore. He’d convinced them that the reason he’d stopped using it was because he had a weaker than average heart. It’d been diagnosed at his last alpha heat-readiness check-up, where they’d assessed his physical health and ability to support an omega through a heat. He’d scored a ten of ten, which meant his father could do exactly what he was doing: attempt to arrange heats for him to handle, either for practice or breeding.
Ned had used the testing, though, to lie to Braden and Finch, telling them that while he’d love to indulge in the high from the powder, he didn’t want to risk his life for it, or damage his heart so that he couldn’t support an omega through a heat. Even Braden and Finch agreed it wasn’t worth dying or giving up heat sex for. Though given the shoddiness of this apartment and these suppliers, Ned wasn’t sure they believed it deep down. Because this couldn’t be good powder. No way.
Braden stood by the window all the way across the too-flammable room, gazing out at the courtyard below, waiting for their powder to be packaged. Finch hovered near the dealer’s table, watching as the packets of powder were divvied up based on his and Braden’s monetary contributions. They were buying some for the servant, too, in exchange for the information.
As Finch hovered, twitching all over, Ned could practically smell Finch’s hunger for the drug. He wondered how often Finch was indulging. It seemed, more often than not these days, he was high.
“Hey, what do you know? It’s our favorite cocksleeve,” Braden said, pressing his nose to the glass and peering down. “Visiting his whore father again.”
Ned stiffened. Ezer was here? He didn’t want him anywhere near these pricks, not ever, but especially not now when he had no idea what was going to happen between them in the future. Tension flared in the room, Finch’s interest piqued, as he came over to peer down, too. “Cocksleeve has a decent-looking mouth,” he muttered. “You know he’d be eager to open it once he was on his knees. He just needs someone to put him there.”
“That someone going to be you?” Braden asked, laughing.
“Give me five minutes alone with him.”
“No,” Ned said, shocked by his inability to hold his tongue.
Ezer wasn’t in the room with them, he wasn’t in danger right this moment, and by the time they had the powder, Ezer would be safe in his omega parent’s apartment, and yet even the thought of Finch having five minutes with Ezer alone made his stomach roil and his pulse pound.
“No?” Finch asked, swinging around. “What is it with you and that scrawny cocksleeve? You got your heart set on his tiny ass or what?”
Braden’s left brow went up, calculations happening behind his eyes, and he dropped his arms by his side, a lazy, dangerous smile on his face. “Pretty sure Ned here has a taste for rubbish. Runs in his family from what I hear.”
