54. Akira

CHAPTER 54

Akira

A mid the tension of the room and the sincere threat that had just been uttered, Kyle sneezed.

Theta flinched, visibly startled. Akira, his head already thrown back, stared at the ceiling and began to laugh. Trust Kyle – whether intentionally or otherwise – to defuse such a serious moment with sheer ridiculousness.

"Bless you," he said.

"Thank you," Kyle returned nonchalantly, as if it was just them in the room and not a handful of Mackenroth's thugs who had come to steal his beautiful sunshine Sir away from him.

And then there was fucking Theta. Of course he saw himself as the hero of the story, saving Akira and the Coterie in a valiant move of courageous brilliance...and not that he was selling them out because of his own fear.

His old Master's betrayal rested heavily on Akira's heart. Because yes, Theta was a prick and always had been, but he wasn't supposed to be working for their enemy .

The Coterie was not Mackenroth's to control. It would not roll over to him. No single man should hold enough power to be able to demand whatever he wanted and get it, certainly not other people's lives. And the Coterie had voted to save Kyle...together, they could have stood up to Benedict Mackenroth. Instead, Theta had blinked and doomed them all.

Especially himself.

Because the moment Akira had the chance to rip his former employer's throat out, he would. He'd fight his way through every star in the sky to wreak the fucking vengeance on him that he deserved for betraying Kyle to their enemies, no matter how bloody Akira became in the process.

Or, bloodier.

Because he could reluctantly admit that he wasn't in the best of shape, his chest rising and falling with shuddering, uneven breaths that shot darts of pain through him on both the inhale and exhale.

But he wasn't broken. Kyle had reminded Akira that he got to choose who to gift his submission to…and it was not these violent, coarse men whose love for violence was symptomatic of Xerxes' descent into a destruction even more tragic than its impending collision with the Earth.

Nor was it his conniving, treacherous ex-Master.

"You have always been my favourite, Akira," Theta said, in that slyly fond way of his that said he was about to turn the screws on Akira's conscience. He slinked closer and lay a warm hand on Akira's bare shoulder before dropping his voice. "I've showed you that over the years, have I not? Did I not give you everything, darling?"

Trust issues and feelings of inadequacy? Akira queried silently, but that was unfair. He'd developed both things long before Theta had picked his scrawny ass up off the streets and turned his desperate and debauched acts of survival into a career.

"I protected you from the worst of my House's clients," continued the other man, "only allowing the pleasure of your company to those with good standing."

Because you could charge them more for it, he reminded himself. Your exclusive whore who could still take it like a slut.

"When you wanted to leave House Theta, I agreed."

You didn't have a choice , Akira thought disdainfully. The Upper who offered me a live-in contract was too influential and wealthy a client to cross.

"When you asked for my endorsement to the Coterie, I put my neck on the line to give it."

The substantial fee I paid you for the favour played no part, I'm sure.

"And yet," Theta finished, his tone darkening and his grip on Akira's shoulder shifting from gentle to fiercely insistent, fingers digging into his bruised skin, "you would not do this one thing for me? You cannot utter a single fucking word, you ungrateful bastard?"

He gave him a hard shove between the shoulder blades and without the use of his hands to steady himself, it knocked Akira forward and off balance. He managed to turn his head so his split left cheek slammed into the floor rather than his nose, vaguely hearing Kyle's indignant, horrified gasp at the impact.

"Benedict Mackenroth can have plenty of words from me," Akira mumbled into the linoleum, wincing when inhaling the air for his next breath drew tight bands of pain around his chest. "Just not an apology."

He would not say sorry for defending Kyle from a monster who thought he was owed the world. Kyle was light and joy and one of only three wonderful things that had ever graced his life.

If that meant Akira would end the night with a bullet to the head, so be it.