56. Kyle

CHAPTER 56

Kyle

T he bluster and threats were, thank every single star that had ever shone in the sky, just that. The men didn't put the toy anywhere near Akira, withdrawing as soon as they saw they'd turned Kyle ashen and laughing at his horror.

But it didn't mean they were done with their victim. Far from it. The toes of their boots found Akira's ribs, over and over, and his bound hands meant he was defenceless against the way they kicked him without remorse.

When Akira's small, reluctant noises of pain reached them, Theta deliberately turned his face away from the scene.

"What, it's fine when you do it, but when other people are abusing him, you can't watch?" Kyle spat.

Theta slowly looked at him, his lip curling.

"Just like it's fine when you do it," he remarked sharply. "There's a difference between a man being hurt involuntarily and seeking it out himself. You know that."

"You didn't always have to say yes to him." Kyle was angry and scared, his heart ached, and the words rushed out without thought. "Akira was vulnerable and needed care, and all you did was reinforce his belief that he deserved to be treated like trash."

Theta rolled his eyes. "I'll be sure to seek your opinion the next time he turns up at my door, shall I?"

"There won't be a next time, asshole."

The other man eyed him with sudden amusement. "No, I suppose there won't be. I wonder how long it will take Mackenroth to break that spirit of yours, Randall. Will it be when he and his brother fuck your breath from your body? Or when he has you chained to the floor like a dog?"

"Please, Theta," Kyle begged, feeling each of Akira's faint, rasping breaths as brutal lashes to his heart.

" Please? " A low, mocking laugh. "Who do you think I am?"

"Someone who calls himself Epsilon's friend," snarled Kyle, although just saying the word made him taste bile. "You and I might not care for each other, but you did all this for Akira, right? You have to help him!"

"What do you think I've been doing?" he snapped back.

"Try harder! "

Theta froze, and then breathed out a short, sharp exhale. "Right. You're right, Randall."

For all his pleading, Kyle hadn't expected that.

"Sometimes what Akira needs isn't clear to even him," Theta mused. Considering that had been Kyle's own revelation a short while ago, he couldn't argue. "I'll have to take his choice away."

That…didn't sound good. But Master Theta was already waving the others away, putting much-needed distance between Akira and his abusers and helping him back up onto his knees.

"There," he murmured softly, stroking a lock of drenched hair out of Akira's eyes. "There'll be no more of that unpleasantness, darling."

Akira looked too exhausted to be suspicious. His gaze sought out Kyle's like it had been magnetically drawn there, and Kyle tried not to visibly react when he saw how the whites of his eyes were now filled with bursts of startling red from the physical trauma.

"You just need to apologise to our mayor," Theta said, his voice gentle, "and I won't need to tell Randall here any of the secrets you've so carefully kept from him. That would be best, no?"

Akira swallowed, his bruised throat bobbing with the movement, and otherwise didn't respond.

Theta sighed as if he truly had no option but to speak the threatened confidences. "Very well." He looked at Kyle. "Five years ago, Epsilon sabotaged all of your applications to the other Houses so you'd have to choose his."

Kyle had suspected as such.

"I'm glad of it," he said, injecting a cheerfulness into his tone that was genuine for the words he spoke, if not the overall situation they found themselves in. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here."

A couple of the other men snickered and muttered whore under their breaths . Kyle ignored them.

"Is that it?" he asked blithely. "Is that the big revelation?"

He knew it wasn't. Theta spoke with a gravitas of anticipation that suggested he was just getting started.

And a treacherous part of Kyle was eager to hear it. To finally learn what Akira had been keeping from him.

Theta cocked his head. "He's been stalking you the whole time," he told Kyle with a triumphant gleam in his pale eyes. "He's followed you home for years , Randall, slinking around in the darkness while you had no idea. Watching your apartment while you slept. Even put a tracker on your runepad."

Oh.

Rationally, Kyle knew he should find that unsettling. And he did, but only in the way that he was frustrated he hadn't noticed, rather than any indignation that he'd been the target of Akira's obsession. Because stars take him, Akira was certainly his.

"You want more?" Master Theta laughed, low and cruel. "I can give you more. So many lies that I expect he's lost track of them, but I'll settle for the one that'll sting. One that's… close to home , so to speak."

Akira flinched.

Kyle fixed Theta with a steady, unimpressed stare. "Try to turn us against each other all you want. Nothing you say will make the slightest bit of difference."

"Nothing?" Theta chuckled, clearly beginning to enjoy himself. He patted the top of Akira's head. "So if I told you that your boyfriend has been lying to you with his every breath since the day you met? That he did everything he could to prevent you from learning about them?"

"Learning about who?"

"His wife and daughter," Theta said simply, over the top of Akira's urgent yet weak protests.

Kyle was tempted to laugh at the ridiculous accusation.

But Akira was straining at his bonds, frantically shaking his head and croaking out something unintelligible as he stared pleadingly up at Kyle.

And it was that, more than anything Theta could say or do, that made Kyle realise it was the truth.

"Akira could never be yours," the other Master continued, shattering Kyle's world into tiny, painful pieces. "He's had a wife this entire time, going home to her each day while stringing you along on the side like the na?ve piece of ass you are. A daughter he's raising on the credits you earn for him." Theta scoffed. "He has an entire family that he keeps hidden from you, Randall, and you claim you know the man? Do you realise how many times I've had him come to me, worried you might find out and begging me to help keep you in the dark?"

Kyle dragged his eyes back to Akira, feeling time slow around them. A tear ran down Akira's cheek, forging a shaky track through the drying blood.

He had a wife. He had a daughter. And in the five years Kyle had known him, he'd never said a word.

He'd allowed Kyle to pursue him, had welcomed him into his arms, and had let him start imagining a future with them together…and he hadn't bothered to ever mention something so important as I already have a wife, Kyle ?

Theta was right.

Kyle didn't know Akira at all.