Four six-packs, three trips to the kitchen, two full games of sKillerz, and a Godzilla movie later, John checked his watch and got off the bed. Fritz would be coming for him soon, because he had an appointment at four a.m. every night that he had to make or he was kicked out of the training program.

See you tomorrow in class? he signed.

"Good deal," Blay said.

Qhuinn smiled. "IM later, k'ay?"

Will do. He paused at the door. Oh, hey, meant to ask.

He tapped his eye and pointed to Qhuinn. What's up with the shiner?

Qhuinn's stare stayed absolutely steady, his smile bright as ever. "Oh, it's nothing. Just slipped and fell in the shower. Really stupid, huh."

John frowned and glanced at Blay, whose eyes hit the floor and stayed there. Okay, something was-

"John," Qhuinn said firmly, "accidents happen."

John didn't believe the kid, especially given that Blay's peepers were still down for the count, but as someone who had his own secret he wasn't into the prying thing.

Yeah, sure, he signed. Then he whistled a quick goodbye and took off.

As he closed the door, he heard their deep voices and put his hand on the wood. He wanted to be where they were so badly, but the sex stuff… No, his transition was about becoming male so he could avenge his dead. It was not about banging chicks. Matter of fact, maybe he should take a page from Phury's book.

Celibacy had plenty of things to recommend it. Phury had been abstaining for, like, ever, and look at him. He was totally tight in the head, a real together kind of guy.

Not bad footsteps to follow in.

"You're going to be the what?" Butch blurted.

As he looked at his roommate, Vishous could barely choke out the fucking word. "The Primale. Of the Chosen."

"What the fuck is that?"

"Basically, a sperm donor."

"Wait, wait… so you're going to do, like, IVF?"

V dragged a hand through his hair and thought how good it would feel to put his fist through the wall. "It's a little more hands-on than that."

Speaking of hands-on, it had been a long time since he'd had straight sex with a female. Could he even get off during the formal, ritualistic sex of the Chosen?

"Why you?"

"Has to be a member of the Brotherhood." V paced around the dark room, figuring he'd keep his mother's identity under wraps a little longer. "It's a small pool to choose from. One that's getting smaller."

"Will you live over there?" Phury asked.

"Live over where?" Butch cut in. "You mean you won't be able to fight with us? Or, like… hang?"

"No, I made that a condition of the deal."

As Butch exhaled in relief, V tried not to get sapped out that his roommate cared about seeing him as much as he cared about being seen.

"When does it happen?"

"Few days."

Phury spoke up. "Does Wrath know?"

"Yup."

As V thought about what he'd signed on for, his heart started kicking in his chest, a bird flapping its wings to get out of his rib cage. The fact that he had two of his brothers and Rehvenge giving him the hairy eyeball made the panic worse. "Listen, you mind excusing me for a while? I need to… shit, I need to get out."

"I'll go with you," Butch said.

"No." V was in a desperate frame of mind. If there was ever a night he might be tempted to do something grossly inappropriate, it was now. Bad enough what he felt for his roommate was an unspoken undercurrent; making it a reality by acting on it would be a catastrophe neither he, Butch, nor Marissa could handle. "I need to be by myself."

V shoved the godforsaken pendant back in his ass pocket and left the crushing silence of the office. As he fast-tracked it out the side door into an alley, he wanted to find a lesser. Needed to find one. Prayed to the Scribe Vir-

V stopped dead. Well, shit. He sure as hell wasn't praying to that mother of his anymore. Or using that phrase.

God… damn.

V settled back against the cold brick of ZeroSum's building, and, much as it pained him, he couldn't help but think back to his life in the warrior camp.

The camp had been situated in middle Europe, deep in a cave. Some thirty soldiers had used it as a home base, but there had been other residents. A dozen pretrans had been sent there for training, and another dozen or so whores fed and serviced the males.

The Bloodletter had run it for years and had churned out some of the best fighters the species had. Four members of the Brotherhood had gotten their start there under V's father. Many others, of all levels, hadn't survived, however.

V's first memories were of being hungry and cold, of watching others eat while his stomach moaned. Through his early years, hunger had driven him, and like the other pretrans, his sole motivation had been to feed himself, no matter how he had to do it.

Vishous waited in the shadows of the cave, staying out of the flickering light thrown by the camp's fire pit. Seven fresh deer were being consumed in a bawdy frenzy, the soldiers slicing meat off bones and chewing like animals, blood marking their faces and hands. On the fringes of the meal, all the pretrans trembled with greed.

Like the others, V was sharpened to an edge from starvation. But he didn't stand with his fellow young. He waited in the far away darkness, eyes locked on his prey.

The soldier he tracked was fat as a hog, with folds of flesh falling over his leathers and facial features indistinct for the puffy padding, the glutton went without a tunic most of the time, his bulbous chest and distended belly jiggling while he paraded around kicking the stray dogs that lived in camp or going after the whores. For all his sloth, however, he was a vicious killer, what he lacked in speed being made up for in brute strength. With hands as big as a grown male's head, he was rumored to snap the limbs off lessers and eat them.

At every meal he was among the first to get to the meat, and he ate with speed, though he was hampered by a lack of accuracy. He didn't pay a lot of attention to what actually made it into his mouth: Pieces of deer flesh and streams of blood and segments of bone would coat his stomach and chest, a gory tunic knit of his sloppy ministrations.

This night the male finished early and eased back onto his haunches, a deer flank in his fist. Though he was through, he lingered next to the carcass he'd been working on, pushing other soldiers away for amusement.

When it was time for the sparring punishments to be dealt out, the soldiers moved from the fire pit to the Bloodletter's platform. In the light of torches, soldiers who had lost during practice were bent over at the foot of the Bloodletter and violated by those who'd bested them, to the sneers and slaps of the others. Meanwhile, the pretrans fell on what was left of the deer while the females of the camp watched with hard eyes, waiting their turn.

V's prey wasn't much interested in the humiliations. The fat soldier watched for a little while, then lumbered off, the deer leg hanging from his hand. His filthy pallet was all the way at the far edges of where the soldiers slept, because even to their noses, his stench offended.

Stretched out, he looked like an undulating field, his body a series of hills and valleys. The deer leg lying across his belly was the prize at the top of the mountain.

V stayed back until the soldier's beady eyes were covered by fleshy lids and his hefty chest went up and down with a slowing rhythm. Soon fish lips fell open, and one snore escaped, followed by another. It was then that V closed in on his bare feet, making no sound over the dirt floor.