Authors Note:

Welcome, everyone, to the third and final book of the NewU saga. Don't worry yet, there is still plenty more to get through, but yes, the end is in sight. I made a promise many moons ago that I would not keep the story running for the sake of it, and it would eventually come to an end. Although I am not ruling out spin-offs at a later date, the world of Pete will - over the next however many chapters - reach its long-awaited conclusion, and new stories will rise to take its place.

I cannot possibly go any further without expressing my heartfelt gratitude to you, the reader, for the support my work has received. The community on Discord has grown beyond my wildest expectations and has become a constant and consistent source of joy for me since its creation. More than that, I must offer my deepest thanks and express my profound admiration to my editors, all of whom have taken time from their lives to correct my staggering level of typos and grammar mistakes and have made this story what it is today.

With that out of the way. Let's get on with the story.

Stay Awesome

Nova

********

"Alright, recap time," I said with a sigh and pulled myself up off the bench. The rain pouring from the sky seemed to ease up almost instantly, and within a few minutes, it had stopped completely. There were so many red flags going up just at that. I knew the last few months had taken a massive toll on me, enough of one to convince one of my closest friends that I was something to be feared, and what I had just done was to essentially bottle it all up, swallow it all down, and get on with things as if nothing had happened. Faye, Uri, and Jeeves all shimmered into being around me, looking first at me, then sadly at the rainwater still wetting the ground, before back to me again. They knew in an instant what it meant. Faye made to speak, but I cut her off. "Save it," I said, perhaps a little more sharply than I intended. "It is what it is. I can't make someone trust me, believe me, or love me. And even if I could, I wouldn't want to. Talking about it changes nothing, at least not right now. If all my efforts are worthy of her trusting me, she will let me know; if not..."

The words were right there, ones I had said hundreds of times in my life... "If not, then fuck her."... But they wouldn't come out. I knew I didn't mean them, but it was a coping mechanism I had been forced to use more times than I could count. It is how I survived my childhood: the ability to drop an attachment to a person like a hot rock, to cut them out of my life with surgical precision and indifference. It was how I had kept myself safe and people at arms-length in a world where the vast majority of people were only out for themselves. And yet, the words wouldn't come.

I would have given Charlotte every part of me, but she didn't want it. So be it; it could be dealt with later.

"First things first, how do we find Marco?" I asked, looking from one of my live-in companions to the next. "I imagine he's gone to ground by now."

There was a long pause, but it was Uri who spoke first. "I'm not sure that should be our first port of call," he said slowly. I arched an eyebrow at him to continue. "The conclave is home to more traitors than just Marco, and it would be in the best interest of all of them to try and hide Marco from us or at least help him keep a low profile. It may be time to clean house, the same with the Sect."

"Okay, I can get behind that idea," I nodded after giving it a little thought. "But how do we do that?"

"Honestly, it isn't going to be pretty," Faye answered this time, seeming to be of one mind with Uri. "Yeh may have to root out the traitors by force."

"How the fuck am I going to do that?" I asked, even the notion of that sending chills down my spine. "Thirteen Evos was hard enough; there would be... what?... hundreds of them in the Conclave? At least?"

Uri shook his head. "No, the Conclave and the Sect would be different; the people in there would already have their minds connected. You wouldn't have to break into them individually. It's... hard to explain, but you will know what to do when you get there."

I arched an eyebrow at him. Knowing what to do when the moment arose was not only poor preparatory advice, but it seemed to be the exact tactic that had gotten me into so much trouble already. "Fuck it, whatever," I huffed. "So we find anyone in the Conclave associated with the Praetorians and wring them dry of any information they have about Marco. What happens if none of them have any?"

"That seems unlikely," Uri pondered after taking a moment to consider the question. "Although, I concede that there is a chance that the people who do know may not all be there when you bring judgment."

"Hmm, bring judgment," I repeated back to him, letting the words roll around my mouth a little, "I kinda like that. But back to the point. We need to get as many people into the Conclave cathedral as possible and attack them. Are there, I dunno, any Evo holidays or anything?"

"There will be a service in my memory," Uri offered.

I held his eye for a moment. "That seems... a little in bad taste."

"Why? They're the ones who killed me. They hardly have the right to complain about their cover being blown at my funeral."

"What about the people who are innocent?"

"If I know Marco, he would have corrupted as many people as possible in the Conclave, and seeing as how he was responsible for awakening people in this part of the world, I'd imagine he has infected a huge number of them. As soon as those innocent people see what is happening, I think you'll be given quite a lot of leeway."

"And the people who aren't so innocent, well, they're the ones we're lookin' for anyway," Faye added with a nod.

"Alright, so we make arrangements for a service to be held in your honor," I looked at Uri, "And then hit it when it's at its fullest, banish the corruption from anyone who has it, finding out whose guilty and whose innocent in the process. Then we... interrogate the bad guys. Sound about right?"

"Yup," Faye folded her arms with a firm nod. Uri nodded, too, and so did the still-quiet Jeeves.

"Fair enough. What about this Judge character?"

"I'd imagine we will get some information about him during the process," Uri answered. "If you remember the party, Marco and I were talking about a Rogue and how unlikely it would be for someone to realize they were an Evo, awaken and train themselves, and become powerful enough to challenge a standard Evo."

"I remember."

"At the time, we were talking about the attacks on other Evos, but the sentiment still holds. Those Evos were attacked by Sterling, a normal Evo who had mastered the art of disguise to a staggeringly advanced level. If there was one good thing to come out of your encounter with Sterling, it has shown us that Evos are able to hide a lot more from each other than we had previously thought. The same, I believe, applies to the Judge. Realistically, we know nothing about him, only that he was at your parent's house when they were killed, that he was at Evie's apartment the night she was taken, and that he is an Evo. We don't even know his real name. But the chances of him having become as powerful as he has without any input from the Conclave or the Sect are nil."

"If you are going to say that someone will know who he is," I interrupted, "then I will remind you that nobody had a clue about Sterling."

"But Sterling was workin' alone," Faye mused as if she was thinking out loud. "The Judge would have had to work with the people in the Conclave or the Sect--the ones who are loyal to the Praetorians."

"So you think that we may get some information on him when we interrogate the bad guys?" I asked. Faye and Uri both nodded. "Actually, now that I think about it, how are we going to get everyone together in the Sect? They wouldn't come to your funeral."

"I was going to suggest asking Charlotte for help on that one, but..." Jeeves answered with a pained look.

"I think we're gonna have to do things on our own from now on," I sighed. "But I am sick of going off half-cocked; I want to know everything we possibly can before we go..." I froze and frowned as something suddenly occurred to me.

"What is it?" Faye asked with a tilt of her head.

"Marco wrote an email to me when we were on our way to Horlivka," I said slowly. "He said that if anything happened to him, I should go to the Archon."

"Oh, shit, he did, aye." Faye gasped.

Uri frowned. "This was before my time here, but..." his eyes flicked off the middle distance as he accessed my memories and read through the email in question. "Hmm, that is... concerning." He finally said. "Thomas has always been an effective leader and has always seemed loyal, but he's also perfectly placed to cause a lot of harm to the Conclave. At the same time, this could be a very effective piece of misdirection by Marco. This was sent before Marco and I got separated."

I nodded; he was right. It was a little vague. "How did you and Marco get separated? You never told me."

Uri flashed his eyebrows in acknowledgment and nodded. "There isn't much to tell. We were about ten miles outside Horlivka. We couldn't get into the city by car to meet Olena, so we dumped it and approached on foot. There were soldiers everywhere; we were hiding in a burned-out building, waiting for a patrol to pass. I crossed the street to the next building when it was safe, and when I turned back to signal for him to cross, he was gone. I searched for as long as I could, but I couldn't miss the rendezvous. He was gone."

I snorted, "And he'd sent me that email beforehand, so if you'd discovered he was the traitor when he rejoined his friends and killed him, I would have been suspicious, and if he got away, making you arrive at the rendezvous alone... or anywhere else after that, for that matter... I would have still suspected you. Fuck, you have to almost admire that level of manipulation."

"He played it perfectly." Uri nodded. "That email, coupled with his corruption of you and your justifiable pre-existing suspicions of me..."

"Yeah." I sighed, looking around the plaza surrounding us. "Sorry about that," I added with a sheepish smile. "So, how do we deal with the Archon?"

"Carefully," he answered after a bit of a pause. "Marco designed that email to get you to kill me. I ended up dead even though it wasn't by your hand. But if his plans went wrong and I'd killed him - which I absolutely would have done if I had worked it out sooner - then directing you to the Archon makes no sense unless he was involved. But at the same time..."

"A man with a penchant for manipulation could have considered that and used it as a way to destabilize the whole Conclave if he was found out and killed." Faye finished with a frown.

"Well, there's nothing like dedication to a cause," I huffed. "Alright, I think we have a good way forward. I'll contact Jerry and tell him to pass on news of your death to the Conclave," I looked at Uri, "Then we will go from there."

A series of nods rippled through my companions before all but one of them faded away. "Pete, Darlin'," Faye whispered as she tucked her hand into mine. "What're yeh gonna do about Charlotte?"

"Nothing," I sighed and squeezed her hand. "I can't spend my life chasing something I'm never going to find. I need to face reality. I'm not the happily-ever-after kinda guy."

Faye frowned but didn't comment. "Can I make a suggestion?" she asked.

"Go for it."

"Yeh need some pussy."

I choked on my own saliva for a moment. I had honestly expected some sort of advice about making things good with Charlotte or even something about not feeling sorry for myself, but I must have forgotten who I was talking to. "I'm bein' serious!" she laughed.

"Is that an offer?" I chuckled back

She shook her head. "No, babe, not from me, not from someone yeh care about. Yeh need someone who yeh can fuck all yer frustrations into. A stress toy. Yeh need to go to a bar, find the sexiest piece of ass in the place, take her home, and fuck the shit outta 'er."

I frowned at her, she really was being serious. "I'm pretty sure that is what got me into this shit show in the first place."

"Just do it, darlin'," she smiled, lifting my hand to her lips and kissing the back of it. "Find a girl, use yer powers to seduce 'er, fuck 'er brains out, give 'er the night of 'er life, then say goodbye in the mornin'. Yeh'll feel better, I promise."

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand. Sex - anonymous or otherwise - was the last thing on my mind at the moment. Nothing could be further from my thoughts. More than that, I had just been standing in front of a mirror, berating myself for that kind of casual use of my powers.

Faye, of course, knew what I was thinking. "Dun worry about yer powers, yeh need to start embracing 'em. Yeh ain't gonna get through this if yeh think of yerself as the bad guy. Yer the alpha male, yer the pack leader, yer the guy at the top that all girls want. And yeh aren't the bad guy, yer not even a bad guy. Forget about Charlotte for a night, forget about Becky, and Philippa, and even me, just for one night. Burn off some of that stress on someone willing. Yeh'll break if yeh don't. Trust me."

"I..." There was no point arguing with her. I had no idea if she was right or not; It was too out of the blue to consider at the moment. "I'll think about it," I answered with a roll of my eyes and a shake of my head.

"Yeh do that, handsome," she winked with a smile. "Then go find a piece of ass, and do 'er too."

I couldn't help myself. I laughed. Despite the turmoil raging through me, despite what I had seen in Charlotte's eyes, despite everything that had happened to me and all the things still left to be done, I laughed. Each note of it banished a little more of the shadow that had engulfed my city since I had arrived with Charlotte. The sky was still dark; it was still dull, damp, and miserable, but that brightness - or at least a small touch of it - was dancing above my city again.

Faye smiled, leaned in, and kissed my cheek before her grip on my hand loosened, and she faded away. I took a look, one more look around my city. I loved being here, I always had, ever since the first days of this new life. When I had spent those months in that Praetorian cell, unable to visit in case it tipped them off to my plan, it had been the one place I had missed more than any other. Of course, I missed home, I missed Jimmy, I missed Charlotte, I missed college and the routine that had always given me. In fact, I was lucky that I was approaching the end of the third year when my attendance was no longer required; otherwise, all the work I had put into it would have been for naught. But none of them compared to here.

Even now, even as the faded sunlight glistened off the wet ground, there was an air of beauty to it, an exceptionalism; that spark of wonder that I had felt since my very first visit all those months ago had never really faded. I had no idea if any other Evo saw their own city the way I saw this one, but this one was mine; every building, every street, every mote of light, and every truly unique plaza resonated with me. My mood - thanks to Faye and the distractions of our planning - had lightened a bit. I was no longer wallowing in the pits of despair as I had been after Charlotte's banishment, but I knew it would be short-lived. I knew what I had done in swallowing it all down and powering through it was not healthy; I knew that it would be back and probably quite soon.

Of course, I didn't know how soon until I sighed, took a deep breath, and let myself fall back into the real world... only to open my eyes and find a furious-looking Charlotte still in my apartment, arms crossed, her foot tapping and glaring at me. That mood came back pretty damned quickly.

"How fucking dare you block me!" she stormed across the room, rage and hurt etched onto her face as she swung her hand back to slap me across the face.

It probably would have hurt; she put a fair amount of strength into it, but that was something neither of us would ever know. My hand shot up in a blur of motion and caught her wrist before her hand made contact with my face. "You know," I said venomously. "I'm getting pretty tired of people thinking they can attack me without consequence! Friends get a lot of leeway; people who look at me like I'm a monster after I've been through Hell to protect them get considerably less so!"

Her eyes widened as my words hit home. The realization washed over her face in an instant, her hand dropping to her side as she took a step backward. I could almost see the pieces falling into place in her mind: the reason why I had shut myself away, how her look had hurt me, and how true the meaning of that look had been. Her eyes faltered and dropped to the floor. "Yeah, that." I shook my head and turned back toward the raised platform where my bed lived.

"What are you doing?" she asked weakly.

"I'm getting changed; I've got things to do."

"What sort of things? I want to help."

"I'll let you know."

"Don't you trust me?" she asked, sounding genuinely hurt.

I snorted out a laugh. "No, Charlotte. You don't trust me. After everything I've done, after everything I've been through to keep you safe, you don't trust me. I don't have the time or the patience to prove myself to you again when everything I've done should have already done that! Why are you still here?"

"Because... You are my friend, and I love you."

I turned around to look at her as I peeled off my shirt. "You can't even look at me when you say that."

"What do you want me to say?!?" she blurted out, tears filling her eyes. "That you scared me? Of course, you fucking scared me! Those Evos you killed in the Praetorian base, there were thirteen of them... Thirteen!... and every single one of them was more powerful than me, and you slaughtered them like they weren't even there! Then you attacked my city..."

"To protect you!!" I almost yelled back. "Marco was in there, and you didn't even know!"

"I didn't know," she answered defensively.

"Of course, you didn't know!!" I was getting pissed now. "I didn't know until I felt him; that fucking asshole designed his spy to be invisible to you! So what, am I supposed to not trust you for being put in a situation you couldn't control? 'Cause that's exactly what you are doing to me!"

"I felt your power, Pete," she said after a pause in which we both just stared at each other. "I felt your anger. It was like staring down the apocalypse. I've never felt that small before; I was... insignificant. I was completely helpless. You could have destroyed me with nothing more than a thought."

"I'm sorry to break this to you, Charlotte," I glared back at her. "But I have always been able to destroy you with nothing more than a thought. That didn't seem to bother you before. But no, I went to fucking war and destroyed hundreds of people to make sure that nobody would threaten you or anyone else I care about ever again! You saw what I saw; you smelled the bodies. You felt what I felt seeing those piles of dead people! That sight is burned onto my fucking eyeballs! That is something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life, and I get home and see the one person who kept me going through all of that, and she is scared of me! How would you feel?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Fuck your apologies," I barked back. "It wasn't a rhetorical question; I wanna know. How would you feel? You go through hell; you do things that you never thought you would be capable of doing, and that fear and that anger builds and builds and builds inside you until it explodes and you butcher more people than you can even count. You are forced to become something you never thought you could be... and you get home to that from one of the people you did all that shit to protect. How would you feel?"

Charlotte looked distraught, but to her credit, she was thinking about it. She took another step back and sat dejectedly on the arm of the sofa. "Betrayed," she finally answered. "Let down. Hurt..."

"Alone," I finished for her, my voice a little softer now. "And that's something I never thought I would feel again."

She knew my past and how I had felt for the entirety of my formative years. She had felt all of it as she had lived my memories with me. That feeling of isolation had been marrow-deep since before I could remember, and the idea that she had added to that, or even reminded me of it, sent a visible jolt of shock through her, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "I've never felt that sort of anger before," she wrapped her arms around herself. "I've never felt like I was ever in danger from you."

"You weren't."

"I know."

"And yet..." I gestured between us, at what was happening to our friendship before our very eyes. "Do you think this is over?" I asked after a short pause. "Do you think the war is won, and we all get to live happily ever after?" She opened her mouth to answer but faltered. I just sighed and shook my head. "You heard what the Praetorians said about the Sect. They are your people, people that you know... personally--your second family. The people you trust most in the world, and at least some of them are spies, traitors, and murderers. Do you think I'm going to just overlook that? What are you going to do when you are forced to pick a side? 'cause that time is coming fast! How scared of me are you going to be if I'm forced to burn the collective to the ground to get to them? You know I'll do it."

"I... I don't know," she whispered. "I can't imagine any of them being involved in this."

"And there's your problem," I shook my head again as I peeled off my jeans and tossed them into the hamper, moving to find something clean. "You still think the world hasn't changed. You think that when this is all over and when the dust has settled, everything will be just like it was. You think you'll be able to go back to work, you'll be able to pop home to see your second family, spend time training me, go out, have fun, and nothing will be different. I'm sorry, Charlotte, but you have no idea what's coming."

"Then show me."

"What?"

"Show me that I can trust you, that no matter what happens, I will always have you, that you are still... you."

"How can I possibly do that? You don't even think I'm still me now, Fuck, I'm not even sure if I'm still me."

"Hurt me," she said quietly.

I blinked at her. A new pair of jeans halfway up my legs. "Sorry?"

"I have spent my entire life being able to look out for myself. I've been able to hold my own. I've never been in the position I was in today where I was totally helpless, and yeah, it scared me. It scared me more that it was you who put me there, no matter how good and right your reasons were. You're right; I am struggling to trust you, not because I think you would hurt me, but because it never occurred to me that you even could. So I want you to show me. I want you to show me how you could hurt me, what you could do to me if you wanted to, how easy it would be for you to destroy me as that asshole did to Philippa or worse. I want you to show me how I don't have any possible hope of stopping you."

"How the fuck would that help anything?"

"Because then I know that you love me. That you could hurt me but choose not to. You're asking me to put your life in your hands, but we both know I haven't seen what you are capable of, not really. Being good means nothing if you don't have the ability to be evil, but when you do have that ability, being good is a choice. If you want me to trust you, the real you, this "you" who's been created by all the shit that's happened, then I need to know that when there is nothing I can do to stop you from hurting me, that you would protect me."

"What the fuck do you think I have been doing?!? How is that any different from what I have been doing every day since we met?"

"I don't care. I want you to show me."

"No."

"You showed me the party when you lost Faye," she pushed. "I saw what you did to the men who attacked Mary's house, I saw how you slaughtered the people who took Becky, I was right there with you when you broke Toussant's mind, and you have shown me everything you did in the war. But all of those things happened to other people; I was never on the receiving end. Today, you showed me what it would be like if you turned on me. Now, I want you to show me how helpless I really am compared to you. How you could take what you wanted from me, how you could drain me, kill me, break me, manipulate me, that you could do all those terrible things that you say you are protecting me from but won't. Because if this is all as bad as you say it is, if the worst is still yet to come, then I need to know that I need you and that you would never hurt me. I need to know that my life is safe in your hands, that you could do all these fucked up things but refuse to because that's not who you are. I know you are going to say you showed me that earlier by protecting me and that you could've hurt me then, I know you are going to say that you have always been in that position, and I know you're right. But I need this. Right here, right now, black and white. Show me!"

"That is insane." I shook my head.

"Do it."

No"

"DO IT!"

"NO!"

"THEN HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARED FOR WHAT IS COMING IF YOU WON'T SHOW ME?! I TOLD YOU, EVERYTHING WITH EVOS IS BASED ON POWER; I NEED TO SEE YOURS TO BE ABLE TO TRUST YOU!"

My patience snapped. As fucking obscene as her demand was, I hadn't missed the fact that she had literally just told me that she didn't trust me, and if I'm being honest, I saw red. I had done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve the loss of her trust, and to be confronted - head-on - by that for doing nothing more than protecting her from the traitor in our midst was more than I could handle. "Fine!" I barked at her, seething at the words that still seemed to echo around the room. "Get on your fucking knees!"

She blinked at me as my will smashed through hers, with a look of utter disbelief on her face, she sank to her knees. I batted aside the minuscule specter of her willpower - the full weight of it crushing hers like a rotten grape under the wheel of a freight train and forced her to obey. To me, her mind was not much stronger than the average human's; it just had walls, but compared to the power I threw at her, her walls were barely more than a tripping hazard. What shocked her the most, however, was the fact that I was doing this from the other side of the room.

Reading an Evo's thoughts, making tentative contact, sure, all those things were possible without the need for direct physical touch, but projecting this kind of power without it was unheard of, at least to her. Before her knees hit the ground, an avatar of me spawned outside her city walls, took a few steps forward, and casually jumped over them. Her mind's eye blinked in astonishment as it completely bypassed every defense she thought she would ever need before an Avatar of her own scrambled to defend herself.

"Strip!" My real-world voice barked, and, as before, she was powerless to disobey. Her trembling hands took hold of the hem of her top and peeled it over her head without a moment's hesitation, dropping it to the floor before reaching behind her and unclasping her bra. Her gorgeous breasts spilled out, her nipples hard against the cool air as she started shimmying her jeans and her panties off in one go.

In her mind, though, things were even more terrifying for her. Her Avatar threw itself at mine in a frenzy of attacks, but the sword she had used to decapitate Marco's spy bounced harmlessly off my skin as if it were made of wet paper. I barely acknowledged her presence as I stormed through her city toward her palace. She seemed to understand my destination by instinct, and her face paled as every idea she could think of to stop me came up painfully, almost laughably short.

To drain an Evos well was to rob them of their power. To destroy their market was to end their life. But to destroy their palace was the most feared of all consequences for our kind. It would destroy their minds - the Evo equivalent of what had happened to Philippa - and that was if they were lucky. A worse fate was to be forever locked within your own body, the connection between it and your mind completely broken. It was literally a fate worse than death.

"Finger fuck yourself!" I growled as I stepped forward, her eyes widening as she watched my fingers move to undo my jeans again. In that moment - as my hands made to free my cock from its confines and my Avatar kicked in the door of her palace - that there was nothing I couldn't do to her. More than that, there was nothing - absolutely nothing - that she could do to stop me. Two fingers sank into her dripping core.

My mind skipped over how wet she already was; it completely forgot - or at least cast aside the memory - that Evos found power to be an aphrodisiac. I was too lost in my anger. Too consumed by my self-righteous indignation. Too blinded by the offense that I now felt at losing her trust for no reason at all.

"Stop!" I growled and waited for half a heartbeat for her to comply. "Is this what you wanted? Is this what you needed to see?" Her Avatar stood, watching in horror as mine turned on the very threshold of her Palace's doorway and glared back at her while the real me stared furiously down into her eyes.

"Go in..." she finally whispered.

I shrugged, and my Avatar stepped through the portal and into her palace.

It was an odd and somewhat disorientating sensation. Being in Charlotte's city - as it had with every city I had ever been in - had told me everything I could ever hope to know about her. Everything that could be learned, everything that could be used, everything that every experience had ever taught her. Until that moment, I had never understood why the palace was its own separate thing, if everything about a person could be discovered while you were outside it. But now I saw the difference. If a city was everything about Charlotte, the palace was who she was.

It was the core of her. It was her beliefs and her personality. It was her hopes, her fears, and her dreams. It was her sex drive, her ambition, her love... it was the home of her soul. There was nothing I couldn't know about her from that spot, two feet inside the door, let alone if I went exploring. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that I shouldn't be in there.

I turned around and stepped back out into the crisp air of her city. Her Avatar was there waiting for me, looking at me with an expression of... something. A cross between fear and awe, between love and hate, between the need to attack and the desire to hug me. Every conflicting emotion played across her face in the time it took my real body to take a single step back... and my avatar shimmered out of her city.

Charlotte made no attempt to cover herself as she gazed up at me from her knees. The same expressions worn by her avatar now washed over her real-world features. "You were toying with them," she whispered in an almost reverent tone. "The Praetorians, that battle, you could have taken anything you wanted to, and there was nothing they could have done to stop you."

"Not with the Inquisitors there, and not without the Evos knowing," I answered back simply.

"You needed them to divulge it to you freely," she nodded. "You gave them enough rope to hang themselves with."

I held her eyes and said nothing.

"You could have made me do anything." The realizations were still coming fast. "You could have changed me into whatever you wanted. You could have turned me into your devoted little fuck pet and made me love it." She looked down at her hand as she slowly extracted her fingers from her core; they were drenched in her juices. She blushed a little before she looked up at me again. My stone-faced expression hadn't changed. "But you didn't."

I arched an eyebrow at her. If the seemingly inevitable "why?" came, then she would find herself as naked as she was now, but on the other side of my front door. If she didn't know the answer to that by now, then nothing I could ever say would show her.

"You love me," she kept her eyes on mine. "I could feel it. You hated doing something that other men would fantasize about. You would never do anything to hurt me. You've hurt so many people, too many people, and you hate it, but you would never hurt me. I can see that now. You feel so alone, Pete, and you have the weight of the whole world on your shoulders.... but... I hurt you, deeply; I felt that too. I'm... I'm sorry. I got scared, and I didn't understand."

"And now?"

"I don't think I've ever been that scared in my life," she sighed. "But I needed to see it. I needed to feel it. It's the only way our kind can properly learn anything."

"You told me you didn't trust me, Charlotte. I..."

"I know," her head hung a little, "I was stupid. I've never been in a position where I was so completely unable to defend myself. I needed to feel you, all of you, properly... and I did when you went into my palace. I know you would never hurt me; I think I just needed that reassurance. I trust you, Pete, with my life; you are the best friend I have. I'm sorry I ever doubted that. But Pete, you need help, not with the war, with you."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm a nurse. I see all sorts of people coming and going through my ward, but the ones that are the most heartbreaking are the former soldiers, the ones who have seen real death and real fear up close. They see threats in every corner; they are always ready for a fight, constantly on edge, like they are waiting for the next bullet to fly past them or the next shell to land. That's you. I saw your face when I first got here; I saw the relief in your face when I opened the door."

It was my turn to hang my head, and I sighed deeply, turning and walking back to the bed to finish getting dressed. "I know. But until this is over, I don't think there is much that I can do."

"You can let me help you." She followed me, sitting - still naked, on the edge of the bed and handing my t-shirt to me. I looked over her exquisite body and then back to her eyes. Normally having a very naked Charlotte on my bed would have had all sorts of things happening to my cock, but I simply wasn't in the mood. Sex was the last thing on my mind at the moment.

"And that's why yeh need some strange," Faye giggled in my mind. I rolled my eyes with a soft smile but ignored her for now.

"You can't help, Charlotte. You saw what these people are capable of. I... I can't lose anyone else."

"I can look after myself."

"No... you can't. I thought that little demonstration would have shown you that."

"But they aren't as powerful as you,"

"No, but they are more powerful than you, and there are God knows how many of them."

She seemed to consider this for a moment before she nodded. "Okay, that's a fair point. And we don't know who they are, so they could attack me when I'm even less prepared than I was with you."

"Exactly."

"But there are other ways I can help."

"Like how?"

"I don't know. I could man your computer? I could hold down the fort? I could be moral support? Pete, I'm part of this war whether either of us likes it or not. I can't sit back and do nothing. You aren't the only one who has lost people."

"You're already doing that, trying to help Philippa."

"Fiona is watching Pip," she sighed. "And she was why I came to see you today."

"Fiona or Pip?"

"Pip. We've hit a bit of a wall with her, and we are going to need your help to make any more progress. But we think we know how to put her mind back together."

I nodded. "Okay, we can go tomorrow. Would that be alright?"

She nodded, still looking up at me. "There's something else."

"Go on."

"It's about Becky..." she started slowly. "Her funeral was a few weeks ago, but there's a service for her tonight. I thought..."

"I'll be there." I interrupted. There was no doubt in my mind. Even if I didn't feel the need to pay my respects to a girl who I - for all intents and purposes - got killed, which I absolutely did, even I could see that I needed to say goodbye properly and get some closure. "It still... It still doesn't feel real." I turned and sat on the bed next to Charlotte, letting my friend reach over and lace her fingers with mine, every shred of anger from a few minutes ago forgotten under the weight of everything that had followed it. "People say that life goes on, whether we want it to or not, but I just feel... stuck."

Her fingers squeezed around mine a little harder, and she nodded, leaning her head on my shoulder. "I know," she breathed softly. "I know you still blame yourself for what happened. I also know you won't listen if I say it wasn't your fault."

"You, Becky, Philippa... all this happened because you knew me."

"Nothing has really happened to me," she said after a pause.

"Aside from losing your friends."

There was another long silence before she sighed. "I miss them."

"I do, too."

We both just sat there, me shirtless, Charlotte naked, on the edge of the bed in silence, sharing that moment of grief and sadness together. I was home, I had won, I had avenged Becky to the best of my abilities, or at least as much as I could so far, and yet I still felt hollow. All of it felt hollow. I knew now that the self-recrimination would never fully go away, that there was a hole in my soul carved out by the loss of people so close to me, that the hole may never go away but could - in time - shrink to a point that I wouldn't fall into it with every step I took. Maybe, just maybe, the service later that day would give me a chance to start the long and arduous process of healing.

"What happens now?" Charlotte asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I have to contact Isabelle, tie in with her for the debriefs of the..."

"No," she interrupted. "I meant with us."

"Oh, sorry." I paused. "What do you mean?"

"Pete, I can't lose you. I know things are fucked up at the moment, but you're all I have left."

I sighed heavily and nodded. "I need you on my side, Charl," I said softly, trying not to sound accusatory. "I need you to trust me. I can't fight this war and then come home to fight you, too, or have you doubt me or be scared of me. This is going to start getting a lot closer to home now, which means it is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. I can't keep you safe if you don't trust me."

"I do trust you. I won't ever doubt you again." her hand squeezed mine again. "I'm here."

"I'm going to have to do some pretty awful things before this is finished," I said slowly. "If you can't handle that, or if you would rather not know, then I need you to stay away until this is done."

She shook her head, her hair teasing my cheek. "I'm staying," she replied firmly. "We're in this together."

I nodded and let that silence fill the room again. I can't say I was completely comfortable with her declaration, but after being in the deepest parts of her mind, I could tell that everything she said was the truth, even if it was only the truth as far as she knew it. There could very well be more moments like this; there could be other times when she was forced to confront the fact that I was not the same person as the one she had met in the hospital all those months ago, that I was dangerous. I would never hurt Charlotte; she knew how deeply that resolve went. I could only hope that was enough for her to trust me. Properly this time.

"Can I admit something?" she asked after about ten minutes of quiet.

"Sure."

"What you made me do, how you made me do it... that was hot as fuck."

I smiled and snorted out a laugh, visions of how wet her fingers were floating back through my mind. "Power corrupts," I joked.

"If we had more time, I would demand you corrupt me right now," she purred back, looking up at her with a glint in her eye.

"Maybe later," I chuckled. "What time is the service?"

"In about five hours," she smiled as she stood, walking over to the middle of the lounge area to start retrieving her clothes and putting them back on. "Do you want to go together?"

I nodded. "I just wish I hadn't missed the funeral."

"It was family only," she smiled. "The chapel is very small, and with all the people who wanted to go, her mom thought it would be better to have a small burial and then a larger service later."

"I guess that makes sense," I sighed. "I can't even imagine what this must be like for her mother."

Charlotte brushed her hands over her shirt as she adjusted the garment into place. "No parent should ever have to bury their child."

I shuddered. "Or what was left of them."

I shook the feeling off with another deep breath. "Do you wanna meet me there?"

"I'll pick you up, it's not far, but... I don't want to go alone."

I smiled and nodded. The mood had changed dramatically and rapidly a few times in the half an hour or so since I had left my city. From depression to anger, to rage, to calming, to grieving, to consolidatory, to a little bit horny, and now back to grieving again. I hadn't been home for two hours yet, and it was already turning into a long ass day. I was just grateful I had slept so much on the way back from the Praetorian compound, but I was still feeling drained to the core. That little tantrum with Charlotte hadn't helped there.

I could feel it in my bones; simply standing was an effort, but I pulled myself to my feet anyway, Charlotte meeting me halfway and wrapping her arms around me and hugging me close, with her head resting on my chest. She had always seemed so strong, so independent, so able to take everyday things in her stride, but now she seemed small, delicate, and vulnerable. I had shaken her badly, both during what I had shown her of the war and what she had seen of me today, but that seemed to have passed, so much so that she clung to me as if desperately needing the protection and reassurance that only I could provide.

Finally, after what seemed to be a lot longer than the minute or so we were actually holding each other, we parted. Charlotte wiped a tear from beneath one of her eyes and blinked away the rest of them before she looked up at me. "I'll see you in a few hours?"

"I'll be here," I smiled back.

With a deep breath and a forced smile that illustrated the pain she was preparing herself for today, Charlotte kissed my cheek and left the apartment.

I pulled out my phone, scrolled through the contacts, and hit dial.

"Pete! It's so good to hear from you," Isabelle exclaimed as she answered the call. "How are you feeling? You looked more than a little wrung out when I saw you last."

"I'm... okay," I answered, smiling to myself at the happiness in her voice at hearing from me. "How are things on your end?"

She snorted a laugh. "Complicated," she replied. "The debriefing process for the people you rescued hasn't really started yet, but that is going to be a long and arduous process, especially considering that the Praetorians turned all of them. Not to mention the prisoners you brought back. It would normally be much easier, but I can't ignore the possibility that I have people on my staff who are traitors, not after reading Arnold... I mean Bob's final report."

"No, you can't," I nodded to nobody in particular. "Finding the traitors in the conclave and the Sect is going to be relatively easy compared to flushing out the ones in the Inquisition."

"Hopefully, the computer files you gave us will help, but it's going to take a long time to work through those, even more so considering I've had to cut back the numbers on the investigation team to people I can personally trust. It turns out that is not as big of a number as I thought it would be."

"I can come back to The Hague to help if that would be useful."

"You are a godsend, Pete. I didn't want to ask after everything you have been through, but I think that might be the only way. We're not at The Hague anymore, though. Too many eyes. We have moved to somewhere a little more secure: my personal residence in Germany."

"Alright, if you can give me a few days, I can be there."

"That would be perfect, thank you." There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Pete, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to repay you for what you have done for us. I don't know what will happen to the Conclave or the Sect after all of this is over, but there will always be a home for you here."

"Thank you, Isabelle," I smiled. "I may take you up on that if things go pear-shaped."

"What's next for you now?"

"I have the service for Becky later," I said, that ache of sadness immediately returning to my chest.

"She was the girl that Toussant murdered, wasn't she?"

"Yeah,"

"I'll make sure her family wants for nothing. It's the least I can do. Don't worry," she added before I could say anything, "I will make sure it is anonymous. A gift from a grateful former patient who heard the news, maybe."

"Thank you. After that, I have a few personal issues to resolve, then I'll be on my way to you."

"Then I hope they all go well," The Princess finished. "I look forward to seeing you again properly, Pete. Please be safe."

"You too, your Highness," I smiled back, teasing her with her title.

"Charmer," she chuckled.

"Speak to you soon, Isabelle. Say Hi to Bob for me."

"I will, Pete. Goodbye."

********

There are many good things about a life lived in Britain, but on more days than not, the weather isn't one of them. British people are stereotypically able to form entire conversations, just talking entirely about that. It may be a cliche, but it is one based on a strong and visceral hatred of the sky and the fact that, more often than not, it needs a plumber because it is leaking all the time. The winters are dark, damp, and miserable; the summer - the part of the year meant to compensate for the depressing state of the rest of the year - is, at best, hit or miss. It can range between sweltering, glorious highs, to basically the same as winter with slightly warmer rain. Spring - as we were in now - was anyone's guess. Even the meteorologists on the weather channel struggled to keep up with the atmosphere's temperamental mood swings.

Today, however, in a massive break with tradition, was actually quite nice. A pleasant breeze blew in from the west, and small patches of fluffy white clouds sailed along on its current. The sun was out, and although it wasn't anything that could be called warm, it was a damned sight warmer than anything I had lived through for the past few months. Even by British standards, it was a surprisingly nice day, and I couldn't help but breathe it in as I stepped out of Charlotte's car outside the pub on the other side of town.

Becky's parents had hired it for the service, and a decent-sized crowd of people were already starting to congregate in the beer garden - the outside seating area attached to the side of the pub. I looked up at the sign above the pub's entrance: "The Knight's Return."

It often surprises people from some parts of the world just how old random buildings like this one really are. Sure, there are the national monuments, like the Tower of London, which have stood on their lofty grounds for about a thousand years, but other castles dotted around the country aren't much younger, and that is before you look at the Roman ruins which are older still, and icons like Stonehedge which are as old as some of the pyramids. But this building was none of those things; it was just a pub, and yet it had been filling its role on the outskirts of some moderately sized British city for centuries. Being a massive history nerd, I had heard of this place, and had even looked it up a few times, but had never actually visited it before.

The tale was that a local knight had stopped at this building when it had been an Inn on his way home from war, and he had bestowed his patronage upon it. The name of the knight was lost to history, but - of course - the legends threw all sorts of famous names around, from the Hotspurs to the Mortimers to the renowned Willam Marshall himself, but one thing had been true. The knight in question paid for his patronage with the spoils earned at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, making the pub at least six hundred years old. Of course, it wasn't built then; it was clearly already standing when the Knight visited, but the actual date of construction was one of those details lost to the sands of time. Still, though, as modest and humble as the building looked now, it would have been an impressive sight back then when most buildings were made of timber and Peat.

It was nice to spend a few seconds thinking of something other than what was about to happen. But Charlotte's hand, curling into mine as she rounded the car to stand beside me, pulled me back at the moment. "You ready?" she asked with a smile.

"Not even a little bit," I returned the gesture and squeezed her hand back. "You?"

"Not even a little bit."

After a simultaneous inhaled deep breath, we started walking towards the gathering crowds. Immediately, a familiar face burst from the group and rushed over to us. "Pete!" the short, older redhead gushed, smiling through the tears that had marred her otherwise pretty face. "It's been so long. How are you?"

"Hey, Amy," I smiled and released Charlotte's hand as the first nurse I saw after the accident wrapped her arms around me. "You know, processing."

"I'm sorry, darling. I heard you and Becky had gotten close."

"We had, yes."

"Have you heard from Philippa? I'd hoped to see her here."

"She's not doing well with all of this," Charlotte jumped in to answer the question. "She couldn't face coming."

Amy smiled sadly and nodded, leaning in and giving the other nurse a friendly embrace. "I can imagine. They lived together, right?"

"Yeah, they'd been friends since college."

Amy shook her head and sighed, "It's so sad; I couldn't believe it when I heard. Who would kill someone like Becky? She was so..." her words failed as more tears started to roll down her cheeks. "Oh, look at me, I'm a mess," she laughed sadly and self-admonishingly.

"You look as gorgeous as ever," I smiled back.

"Oh, you," she chuckled, wiping one of those errant tears away. "Best not let Charlie hear you saying that, though." She winked with a nod behind her toward a man watching us in the crowd with a smile on his face.

"Charlie?" I asked, looking over at him. It took me a few moments to pull his face from the mountain of memories in my head. "Ohhh, the guy you brought with you to the shindig after I got out of the hospital?" Amy nodded with a smile. "It's going well, then?"

"Yeah, it's going really well," she blushed slightly. "Don't worry, he's not really jealous; that was a joke."

I laughed, "I guessed as much from the glow."

She giggled girlishly and blushed a little more, looking over her shoulder to flash a smile at her now-long-term suitor. The man - a decent-looking guy appearing to be in his fifties with salt and pepper hair and a face full of smile wrinkles - grinned back at her and nodded his head to me. "I'd better go," she said with a smile. "It was really lovely seeing you again, Pete." she said to me before turning back to Charlotte and hugging her, "And I hope your leave helps you, darling.

"Leave?" I said to Charlotte as we watched Amy leave.

"Yeah," she nodded. "I haven't been to work since Christmas, since we lost Becky. Philippa has needed me."

"Ah, yeah, fair enough," I murmured, suddenly struck by the fact that with everything going on in my own life, I hadn't for a moment considered the sacrifices Charlotte had made because of recent events. For reasons I couldn't begin to fathom, I hadn't considered that she had made any changes at all. The more I thought about it, the more self-centered that felt to me. I frowned at myself before Charlotte nudged me.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I wouldn't want you to overpay," I smiled. "C'mon, I need a drink."

"Oh god, me too," she sighed before I led her indoors.

With a chuckle, she hooked her arm into mine, and I led her through the wider patio doors and inside toward the bar. The young girl behind the bar looked too young to be serving alcohol; she wasn't, obviously, but she sure as hell looked it. So much so that I had to take a quick peek into her mind to find out that she was, in fact, older than I was. It wasn't that I was a bad judge of these things; but the girl looked to be about fourteen, her face full of acne, the barely budding chest, and the teeth braces to boot. If she had her hair up in pigtails, she would have made the perfect parody of the sister out of Hey, Arnold! And it was freaky. So much so that my mind seemed to latch onto it for the entire time it took for her to make my vodka and coke and Charlotte's G'n'T. I was still frowning at the thought when Charlotte turned to start chatting quietly with someone standing next to her.

I knew my mind was trying its hardest to distract itself, anything to not think of the subject at hand or the reasons why we were here. More importantly, it was trying its damnedest to gloss over that ache in my chest that was telling me that the only reason anybody was here was because I got Becky killed. The history of the pub, the totally irrelevant and highly unsurprising revelations about Charlotte not working at the moment, then the bar staff; it was as ineffective as it was predictable. It was my mind being the same coward it had been when Becky had been alive. I hadn't looked into her mind to find out her feelings for me, and now my mind was doing everything it could to distract me from where we were and why we were here.

And it was doing it again.

I growled at myself and moved to stand next to Charlotte, looking up and straight into the last face I expected to see.

Becky.

Or at least an older version of her.

Only the glass smashing on the ground after it fell from my hand pulled my stunned mind back to the moment. The woman in front of me smiled, but only the haunted, haggard expression worn permanently on her face seemed to stop that from becoming a full-fledged giggle "I'm guessing you were close with my daughter," her smile remained, despite her voice sounding heartbreakingly sad.

"This is Maria," Charlotte said softly. "Becky's mom. Maria, this is Pete."

"Pete," Maria smiled a little wider. "I remember the name; my daughter was very fond of you."

"She..." my words faltered, "She saved my life, she was... she was amazing."

"You loved her," Maria said, her eyes not leaving mine.

I let out a long, ragged sigh and nodded. It was a truth I had already known for a while now, but I couldn't bring myself to wallow in the grief of what I had lost because I had not only taken advantage of Becky's feelings for me but was responsible - indirectly or not - for her death. "I'm so sorry," I croaked out, my voice thick with emotion and my eyes starting to mist as the tears came.

"Oh no, darling boy," Maria sobbed, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around me. She was shorter than me, just like her daughter had been, and I had to bend forward to press my face into her shoulder. "If you start, you're going to get me going as well."

I nodded into her shoulder, trying to get a hold of myself

"She told me about you, about your accident. How incredible your recovery was, how proud she was of you. I could see in her eyes that she liked you, and I thought there was more to it. She was excited, she was happy, I know she liked to take things slow, but... I know she wanted..."

I just breathed heavily and listened, waiting for her to continue.

"I know she would have wanted you to bend me over the bar and fuck me in the ass."

I blinked, my head shot up as Charlotte choked on her drink. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me, stud," she purred, every ounce of sadness and grief gone from her voice. "I want what you gave my daughter and that slut she lived with. I bet you've taken this one's ass," she smirked at Charlotte. "Such a pretty little thing, isn't she."

I took a step back, glancing at the stunned-looking Charlotte before turning back to Maria. "Maria, I..." Suddenly, it hit me. The presence in her mind that hadn't been there before was like a shadow filling her grief-stricken psyche. "Who are you?"

Maria smiled, stepping back and picking up a drink off the bar and downing it in one before she frowned at it. "I will never understand why people drink this stuff. It's vile. Do you think I should put her out of her misery?" she looked up at me as if she hadn't heard a word I had said. "Human self-pity is such a pathetic emotion. She wants it, you know. To die. To be rid of the pain. They are totally incapable of understanding that pain is the thing that makes them stronger and makes them grow. Perhaps I should break this glass and dig out her jugular with the shards."

Charlotte's hand curled into mine, but I barely noticed it. "Who. are. You?"

Maria, or the person controlling her, just sighed and put the glass on the bar. "You can call me the Judge," she said imperiously, "I thought it was time we talked."

"Sure," I growled, "Get out of her head and come say hello. We have plenty to catch up on, and I know you have to be close."

Maria rolled her eyes. "For someone who has achieved so much, you are woefully misinformed. I planted the seed in this one weeks ago; I could be anywhere within a thousand miles. Perhaps I overestimated you."

"Oh, you're going to find out soon enough."

Maria laughed. "There we are, that's the spirit. Pain, suffering, conflict, these things drive us forward; they make us better. You are starting to see that now, aren't you?"

"Is that why you killed Becky?"

"No, That's why I killed your parents. Becky was Toussant's fuck up. I told him to keep her as bait, not to rig a damned bomb to her. That man always was a little impulsive, but I can almost feel that sense of triumph you must have had when he died screaming."

"He doesn't know Toussant is still alive." I thought to myself, trying to keep the revelation off my face. "He can't be in regular contact with the Praetorians. They've known since the day he left. But... "You can call me The Judge," he doesn't know I know about him."

"Not yet, but I will, and you won't be long behind him."

"Oh, come now, Pete. Threats won't get you anywhere. We could be very strong allies if you could only look past your own humanity."

"What is it with you people thinking that my humanity is something to be ashamed of?"

"You people?" Maria frowned. "Oh, you must have met those Praetorian fools." she laughed. "How did that go?"

"You were helping those fools not too long ago."

"Useful idiots," she waved her hands dismissively. "I must say, you are taking the news of my involvement in your parent's death rather well. I gathered you weren't close to them, but I get the impression you already knew." She squinted at me. "How?"

"I have my ways."

"Well, it's rather simple, really," She smirked. "One of the Praetorians let it slip, no doubt in some attempt to show you how Evos and Inquisitors are working together. Your ways aren't as impressive as I had expected. Tell me, how is that pretentious cretin, Tiberus?"

"Dead. Like the rest of them. He certainly died screaming."

Maria's eyebrows raised a little. "I stand corrected; that is much more impressive."

"Your approval means everything to me, can't you tell?"

Maria, or the judge - it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart at this point - laughed. "We are going to be friends, Pete. I can tell already."

"Friends?? You are fucking insane. You killed my parents and shattered my friend's mind, kidnapped another one, and are now controlling the mother of the friend you killed! There's no coming back from that."

Maria frowned. "Shattered mind?" She looked confused for a moment. "Oh, the other nurse. Yeah, that was... unexpected."

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"That was a total accident. I never meant to harm her at all."

"You broke her mind into a million pieces."

"I did, yes. But think about it. She is a human. I could have gone into her head and taken any information I wanted from her, but you stopped me. Breaking her mind like that would have been counterproductive, otherwise."

"What?"

Maria was looking thoughtful. "There is always an interplay between minds when an Evo connects to a human. In most cases, it is too subtle to be noticed, but if you were to try to control Maria after I release her, it would be a little harder for you to do it, because I had been here first. It's like you would have to override my previous control. As you can imagine, it's not a phenomenon that has been studied much, but I think that the residual effect left on a human is directly proportional to the power of the Evo who entered her mind. So when I tried to take what I wanted from the nurse, she... resisted. Far more vigorously than I had expected. It actually took a lot of effort to get what I wanted from her. I suppose that's a testament to how strong you are." Maria shrugged. "But yeah, the brute force approach was messy, but it was necessary at the time."

"How do we fix it?" Charlotte asked, the first time she had spoken since the whole conversation started.

Maria blinked at her. "Oh, I'm sorry dear, I forgot you were there--such a pretty thing. I thought I knew about all the people in Pete's life, but I don't know you. What's your name?"

"I asked first," Charlotte snarled.

Maria chuckled. "So you did. Honestly, I don't have the first idea. I didn't even know a human mind could withstand that sort of punishment before the nurse, although I suspect that it probably can't normally, and it was Pete's power that kept her... partially intact. So, your name?"

"Nice try," I interrupted. "What do you want?"

Maria turned to face me, her momentary interest in Charlotte exhausted. Although why he simply didn't take the information from Maria - who already knew Charlotte - was beyond me. "What do I want? That is a good question." She mused thoughtfully. "I was hoping that we could come to some sort of agreement, let bygones be bygones. I crossed you during my short-lived cooperation with the Praetorians, and it was never my intention. So, I initiated this contact to see if you were open to the idea."

"The Praetorians seemed to think that you were not only one of them but had been for a while." I countered.

"Hmmm, well yes, I suppose 'short-lived' is a relative term for an Evo," she shrugged again. "But I let them think what they wanted to think. My interests have always been my own."

"And they are?"

"Complicated." She chuckled. "But suffice to say, they don't involve fighting you."

"I find that very hard to believe," I said after a pause. "Your actions, so far, would suggest you've gone out of your way to pick a fight. This one included."

Maria looked thoughtful again for a few moments. "Hmm, yes, I suppose they have. Okay, how about this..." she said after a while, "...I will stay out of your way, you stay out of mine, and as a gesture of goodwill, I will give you Marco."

I blinked.

"Yes, Marco." she smiled. "I know all about his stunt at the Evo gathering - bad form, in my opinion, and a stupid idea if he wanted to catch Uri - and I know he is at the heart of the conspiracy within the Conclave. So it seemed like a good idea to keep tabs on him." She paused again and looked at me. "Do we have a deal?"

I glanced at Charlotte, and she looked back at me with a shrug. "For now, yes." I finally answered. "But there are conditions."

"I'm listening."

"Your attacks against me, or anyone associated with me, stop! I don't have words to describe the storm that will chase you if I find you're responsible for anything after today."

"A fair condition," she nodded.

"Your association with the Praetorians ends. They've started a war they cannot win, and I intend to see it through. If you are with them, you are against me."

"Already done, Not that they know that," she smirked.

"Am I going to find out something that is going to piss me off? Something that you have already done that I don't know about yet?"

Maria paused, her mouth opening before closing again. "There is something," she said slowly, "but it's something that I don't know if you will be angry about. It is something that you will have to find out for yourself, though."

I arched an eyebrow at her. "That's not really living up to the deal."

"I know, and you're right," she nodded. "It is not something that can be explained, but something that has to be discovered for yourself."

Memories of Uri's description of Marco's corruption floated through my mind. I had been furious at the time at having answers withheld from me, but he had been right. I didn't want to give this asshole that sort of benefit of the doubt, but experience had taught me not to write it off, either. "You know I will find you if it's something that pisses me off, don't you."

She smiled. "I'm sure you will try. Pete, you must understand that I could have done a hell of a lot more today than just communicate with you through this woman. I could have laid a trap for you to walk right into, I could have planted bombs under every table, I could have lined up snipers in the bushes, and even if I couldn't kill you, I could have made you suffer. I have chosen not to; instead, I have attempted to open a dialogue. I appreciate that you're going to have a hard time trusting me, but if my motivations were less than sincere..." she gestured around her at the mundane background life of a suburban pub. "It's up to you if you want to take that olive branch or if you want to hold onto grudges from a time before we were acquainted."

I considered this for a moment before answering. "I'm not ready to accept this as a peace offering just yet; you seem a little too cavalier about murdering my parents and the other things that have happened. You were right, we weren't close, but that isn't the point. You attacked me, you were aligned with Praetorians, and it will take more than one conversation before I am able to take this peace offering at face value."

"That's fair," she nodded, listening closely.

"But..." I went on. "I am willing to concede that if you wanted to cause more harm, you could have, and I should take that as a step in the right direction. But tell me something first. Why did you break your ties with the Praetorians, or perhaps more accurately, why did you align with them in the first place."

"Oh, that's easy.," she laughed. "I was looking for you."

"Sorry?"

"Well, not you specifically, but I was looking for the Dynast. It's clear now that I have found you."

"What do you know about the Dynast?" my ears pricking up at the term used by Nathan back at the Praetorian compound.

Her smile spread a little wider across her face. "Unfortunately, that's going to be a much longer conversation. Suffice to say that some of us have been looking for you for a very long time."

"And now that you have found me?"

She maintained her smile as if she was enjoying this entire repartee much more than I was. "I make a peace offering."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. I wasn't in the mood for cryptic bullshit, not today, not after the morning I'd had and the few months that preceded it.

"Alas, our time has come to an end. Not all of us can be as powerful as you." She smiled and nodded a bow. "I hope you consider my offer carefully."

"And how do I contact you if I decide to accept?"

She thought about this for a moment before quickly reciting off a phone number. "Leave a message on that number; I know you will be able to remember it. The phone will never be switched on, but the mailbox can be accessed. I will check it in a week."

I nodded again and made to say something else, but Marie blinked a few times before looking around. She composed herself quickly and smiled at Charlotte and me. "I'm sorry, I was a million miles away then," she said apologetically. "I'm sorry I can't talk more, but I'm so glad to have met you, Pete; Becky would have been happy you came, and so am I."

"Thank you, Maria," Charlotte said as my mind immediately started to struggle with the sudden shift back to the persona of a grieving mother. She picked up her glass, frowning at it, obviously not remembering drinking it while being controlled by the Judge, and turned back toward the bar staff to order another.

Charlotte, correctly guessing that the conversation with the real Maria was now over, tugged on my hand to lead me away. I was caught blinking at the sudden change and barely noticed the crunch of broken glass beneath my wet feet. I was suddenly in very dire need of a drink.

The atmosphere surrounding me, the somber, grieving air, was all forgotten. There was only the conversation with the Judge rattling around the confines of my mind. Even my ever-present companions, Jeeves, Faye, and Uri, were shocked into stunned silence.

And then the anger started to build.

Being where I was, being as surprised by events as I had been, I had skipped over a few fairly significant details...

"Perhaps I should break this glass and dig out her jugular with the shards."

"No, that's why I killed your parents."

The smugness, the arrogance, the self-superior, untouchable attitude. Everything about the beginning part of that conversation seemed designed to goad me into a fight that couldn't happen, not in a memorial service, not against the mother of my dead lover, not when the real culprit was anywhere from six feet to a thousand miles away. And then, when I didn't rise to it, it became conciliatory. Almost reasonable.

Reasonable to the point that for a moment - a moment that hadn't quite ended yet - I was considering actually forgiving the trespasses inflicted upon me until now and - as she said - let bygones be bygones. And then there was that little nugget about the Dynast at the end. A spiritual leader of our kind, according to Nathan, but I - like him - knew nothing more about it. And yet, The Judge, if he or she were to be believed, knew enough about it to be actively hunting for it. Fuck, why hadn't I pushed that question? Why hadn't I made him tell me everything he knew about the Dynast as one of the conditions of this impromptu ceasefire? Why the fuck were things still only occurring to me after I needed to consider them.

Well, they did say that experience is knowledge gained five minutes after you need it.

"I don't know what to think about what just happened," Charlotte murmured after a few moments of contemplative silence.

"Do you believe him?"

"I... I don't know," she answered carefully after a short pause. "The thing about Evos having an effect on humans is a long standing theory, but not one I know much about, but it could explain what happened to Philippa. Whether it was an accident, as he claimed, or not is anyone's guess. But, he did have a point when he said he could have caused a lot of damage here."

"Yeah, I have to admit, that part was pretty compelling." I nodded hesitantly. "Something about it still feels off, though. Do you think he could have really made Maria kill herself?"

Charlotte shook her head, "I have no idea, I couldn't do it, but what you made those humans do in the Praetorian base is pretty categorical proof that there are a lot of things I'm not able to do that more powerful Evos are."

"And you think he is a powerful one?"

"He's gotta be," she shrugged in resignation. "To hold that level of control over Maria for that long? That's not easy for someone with lower levels of power." She paused again. "Pete, he's offering you Marco as a peace gesture. All that fucking around in the Conclave, the Sect, it would all be unnecessary."

"No, I'm sorry, Charl," I sighed. "I know you can't imagine any of your people being involved in this, but some of them are. They need to be found, and it's not going to be pretty."

She sighed helplessly, too. "I hate this," she breathed out, stepping in closer and wrapping her arms around me.

"Yeah, betrayers are banished to the lowest pits of hell for a reason, at least according to Dante."

"No, not that." she shook her head against the front of my shoulder. "It's you. You are the only one who's able to do these things... and I can see what it's doing to you."

"Oh,"

"Please don't shut me out again, Pete. I know you are capable of doing this on your own, but you don't have to."

"Then please don't look at me like I'm a monster when I do what needs to be done." I half smiled back. It was a joke, but many a true word is said in jest.

Fortunately, in that moment Charlotte chose to take it as one. "You may be a monster, but you are my monster." she chuckled weakly. "C'mon, I'll take you home; I don't want to be here anymore."

I nodded and let her lead me toward the door. I took one look back over my shoulder and into the main lounge area of the pub. On an easel, in the center of the room, wreathed in white summer flowers, was a portrait of a gloriously smiling Becky. Her eyes were as vibrant and as bottomless as I remembered them, and even in death, even through a picture, her smile was bright enough to light up the room. People seemed to congregate around it as if the warmth of her features was enough to hold back the soul-crushing grief of her loss.

I expected to feel that sharp pang of guilt, that clutch of shame and regret at my chest, just as I had when I first laid eyes on her mother, but it didn't come. At that moment, it finally dawned on me, properly this time. Becky's death had been a tragedy; it had been a perversion of powers she didn't know existed, and it had been done on the whim of a man intoxicated by the idea of his own supremacy and righteousness, acting on behalf of an organization that saw humans as... less.

Becky may have been killed because of her association with me; that was an irrefutable fact, but for the first time since her death, I was starting to feel like the blame for her murder lay not at my feet but in the hands of the men who had actually killed her. I couldn't ever claim to have known Becky well enough to be able to say something sentimental like "she wouldn't have wanted me to get justice for her," I didn't have the first idea if that was true or not. But I did know that she wouldn't have blamed me. I had seen that smile so many times; I had felt its warmth, and I didn't need to have delved into her mind to know that the times she shared it with me were genuine and something that she wouldn't have ever chosen to change. By reducing her memory to a series of events that led to her death, I was insulting it, I was dishonoring her, and it needed to stop.

Becky was the best of us. She was bright and pure in a world full of darkness and deception, and I would not let her memory be tainted as anything other than that by the people who killed her. I would not label her as a needless casualty or as a victim of my own hubris but as an innocent, beautiful life snuffed out pointlessly by powers whose expiry date was long past due.

"Goodbye, Becky," I whispered to her across the room. "I'll never forget you."

********

Stepping back into the Queen's Head an hour or so later, I was still shaking with anger at everything that had happened during the service. It wasn't The Judge, or at least, it wasn't only The Judge that had my teeth on edge; it was Becky's picture. It was seeing the loss and the agony on the faces of those who loved her, and it was the knowledge that there were people still drawing breath who had a hand in her death. That was before you considered the deaths of all the others.

The rage that I had kept bottled up and mostly under control since leaving the Praetorian compound was now bubbling much closer to the surface than I liked, and something I could only describe as a pressure was building up in my chest.

I stepped into the bar and blinked at the crowds. My track of the days had been well and truly shot, and it took me a few moments to realize that it was Saturday evening. I had expected the same calm, quiet, suburban bar that I had left earlier that day; instead, the place was packed to the rafters.

There is a phenomenon in British pub culture that bar owners rarely talk about. The theory goes like this: make the place as attractive as possible to women, and women only. Give them music loud enough to dance to but not too loud as to stop them talking, give them seating areas to retreat to after their jaunts to the dance floors, provide security to make them feel safe, and make sure there are a few cocktails on the menu, just don't make it too obvious. Men are irrelevant. Men will follow the women. Women go out to have a good time, but men - whether they know it on a conscious or subconscious level - are out on the hunt. This is why sports bars are almost universally empty when there are no games on.

Uncle Bob - Jimmy's somehow related, not-really uncle who owned the place - had this balance down to a fine art, and the place was filled with scantily clad women dressed to take advantage of the mildening spring temperatures. Slut dresses; that is what Jimmy called them. Some variation of brightly colored, skin-tight garment that showed off at least as much flesh as it covered, usually ending barely below the ass cheeks, plunging far into the cleavage, and not a bra in sight. My eyes slid frictionlessly over the crowd, stopping to admire a few of the more tantalizing pieces of nubile flesh on display as I walked to the bar.

"What can I get you?" A deep, baritone voice asked from the other side of the bar. I turned to smile at Uncle Bob.

Bob looked back at me blankly.

I frowned for a moment, looking into his unrecognizing eyes. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had put a block over his memories just before Christmas when Toussant's team had been hunting me, and I had never removed it. He had forgotten that I even existed and would forget all about me again as soon as I left his sight. It was a strangely jarring experience. Bob had been a mainstay of my college experience for the entire time I had known Jimmy, so to see him looking at me like a stranger was a painful reminder of what I had lost and did nothing for that coiling rope of anger trying to strangle my stomach. For a moment, I almost removed the blocks just so that I could selfishly bask in the warmth that Bob had always provided. But he was a good man, an honest man, a man who was in no way related to Jimmy but had taken him on as if he were his own and had - by association - in some ways extended that sentiment to me. There was an inherent decency about him, but I knew that he would be first in the line of fire if the fight ever came to my door. I couldn't put him in harm's way by knowing anything about me, at least not yet.

So, once again, I was forced to confront the reality of my new life, the loneliness and isolation of it. People who were important to me were being kept away for their own safety, and that thought dragged up a whole new wave of anger. "No, thanks," I answered him with as calm a voice as I was able and turned back to look at the crowds.

By this point, a dozen or more sets of hungry eyes were on me. After all this time, it still surprised me to see women looking at me with heated lust in their eyes. My powers had changed me to make them all overwhelmingly attracted to me, sending them into the closest thing a human could experience to "heat," and every shred of that arousal was directed my way. Dilated eyes, flushed chests, glowing cheeks, heavy breaths, and increasing speculative glances - or downright stares - were all pointed at me. The first girl to approach me was going to be in trouble because right now, I could understand exactly what Faye had meant. I needed to fuck something or kill something, and at that moment, I wasn't particularly fussy about which opportunity presented it first.

And, as if on cue, the first one walked over.

She was tall, probably about 5'9", maybe 5'10", easily taller than I had been before the changes I had made to myself, but now standing at a solid six feet, I was able to look down into her eyes as she approached. She was gorgeous; there was no other way to say it. Straightened blonde hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, with tresses falling loose to frame her face. Full pouty lips, dazzling green eyes, and a curvaceous body that had hips, tits, and ass in all the right places. More than that, they were wrapped in a silvery-sparkly strappy dress that looked like it would be knocked off her with a single enthusiastic move of her arms. The words that I had typed into my editing station all those months ago echoed through my mind.

"The more attractive I find them, the more willing they are to throw themselves at me."

Well, this girl was taking that message to heart as she sauntered closer and placed a hand on my chest. "Hey, handsome," she purred, "I must be psychic 'cause I can definitely see you and me destroying my bedroom tonight. Buy a girl a drink?"

I wasn't in the mood for fucking around. The anger that was normally walled off in my city was pacing back and forth in its cage, ready to burst out at any moment, and if it couldn't find someone to hunt, punish, and kill... then it would take fucking the shit out of someone as an acceptable second option.

"Why?" I answered back, holding her eyes. "You aren't going to get to drink it."

"Oh?" she purred a little louder, pressing the swell of her chest against my arm as she tucked herself in tight against me. "Have other plans for little old me?"

I leaned in close and whispered into her ear. "I'm just wondering how many times I can make you cum before you pass out and how loud you are going to be when you scream, begging me to keep fucking you."

Her whole body shivered, her lips parted, and she looked into my eyes with panting breaths. "Oh fuck," she breathed. "Then I guess you'd better take me home so you can show me."

"My place is only upstairs. Think you can last that long?"

"Probably not," she purred, "but it's better than the few miles to mine. Lead the way, baby; I am going to blow your mind."

"We shall see."

I turned and started walking towards the end of the bar and the stairs that led up toward my apartment, letting the girl trail enthusiastically in my wake. I glanced around to watch her flash a cheeky wave to a group of her friends before she hooked her arm into mine and pressed herself against my side. My hands reached around her and grabbed her ass roughly. This wasn't a seduction; this wasn't the dance I had danced with Olivia, or even Evie, in this very bar; this was something else entirely. This was me embracing my powers, finding a willing and wanton human slut, and giving her exactly what she wanted while taking everything I needed out of her... or on her, in this case. I had experimented with something like this in that first month after leaving the hospital, but never on this scale. My confidence had been an issue back then, and I still had those misguided notions of staying true to my human sentimentalities- stupid notions like the equality between men and women, not wanting to be seen as some douchebag player, wanting to treat all people with the respect, and dignity that I had always been denied. As noble and right as they were, they were human concerns, and - to be frank - they were beneath me. Part of me knew that I would regret these thoughts in the future, if not in the morning, but at that moment, I simply didn't care.

There was no harvesting her mind for ways to please her, just the cursory check to make sure she was human and not someone influenced to be used against me; there was no seductive flirtation, and there was no need to learn all about her to make this special for her. I didn't even need to know her name. This was anonymous; this was primal, and it was basic. She was, in essence, stress relief, and I was going to fuck her until I was satisfied, then discard her to the walk of shame in the morning. I got the distinct impression that not only did she want the same thing, but it wasn't the first time she'd done it.

I let her go up the stairs in front of me for no other reason than to make a blatant display of hungrily staring at her ass. It was, to be fair, a phenomenal ass, and the sultry looks she was sending over her shoulder told me that she was more than aware of where my eyes were lingering, and she put an extra sway into her hips to make the vision that little bit extra alluring. Then flashed me a wink.

My hand acted before my conscious mind could engage, and it snapped out to land a spank on her plump, rolling asscheeks. The girl didn't yelp, despite the harshness of the blow or the volume it echoed around the stairwell. She didn't cringe, and she didn't even break eye contact; she just licked her lips and purred, loud enough to be heard over the music at the bottom of the stairs. "Thank you, Sir," she mewled in a voice as thick and seductive as pornographic honey. "Please, may I have another?"

"No," I said, part of Becky's fantasies floating through my mind again, the first time they had done so in too long a time. "The next one will be earned."

"Will my slutty little mouth do the trick?" she purred as she got to the top of the stairs and waited for me.

"Guess you'll have to find out," I answered, brushing imperiously past her, barely giving her a second glance. I walked to my apartment door, each stride measured yet urgent, and not a look over my shoulder toward her as she snapped to attention and scurried along the short hallway after me. By the time my key was in the lock, her body was folded to the side of mine and her lips were pulling at my lobe between heated whispers into my ear.

"I'm going to be the best slut on fucking earth for you."

My hand stopped as it pressed down the door handle, keeping it fully depressed but not pushing the door open to allow either of us entry. "People talk a lot," I said as I stared her down. "For most people, talk is all they do. Talk themselves up, talk a big game, talk talk talk. I'll let you in on a secret. What you say is meaningless; the only thing that matters is what you do. That is the difference between people who are the best at something... and posers. The difference between a person with value and a person with none. Which are you?"

She swallowed hard as she looked back into my eyes, but I didn't give her a chance to answer.

"When I open this door, I am going to take you. I am going to fuck you in ways you didn't think were possible. I am going to use you to work out the frustrations of a really long fucking day like you were nothing more than a toy for my amusement. You can say all the nasty, slutty shit you want to, I'm sure you will, and I'm sure you are very good at it. But I will judge you on what you do. So if you want to leave here tomorrow as the best slut on fucking earth, then you're going to have to prove it."

She shivered hard as she looked back at me, her bottom lip tucked firmly into her teeth as we both stared at each other. Then, with her eyes dilating, she nodded.

"Good girl," I said with a nod of my own and pushed the door open before letting her step in first. Looking around my home, she suddenly seemed smaller, not timid or vulnerable, and she was as hungry and eager as she had been downstairs. It was more like we had quickly and concretely established a hierarchy, and she knew that she was below me on it. Not that she was less than me as a person, human or otherwise, not that she was worth less or lacked in any promise or potential; it was just this moment--just this interaction between us and my complete dominance over her within it. I had taken control from her, issued her with a challenge, and without even the slightest of mental nudges, she had accepted it completely. The look in her eyes told me that. The fierce determination, the lust, and the self-assuredness of a woman who knew what she wanted and knew she had what it took to get it. She had made a declaration in the hallway that she wanted to be my best, and she was going to try her damned hardest to achieve it.

By the time the door had closed, she was facing me again. She reached a hand up to her shoulder, teasing the strap before freezing and looking at me. "May I?"

"Tell me what you are wearing under it first?" I replied, leaning back against the now-closed door with my arms folded across my chest.

"Wouldn't you rather the surprise?" she purred at me. I didn't answer; I just raised an eyebrow at her. She cleared her throat and blushed. "Just my panties, Sir."

"Describe them to me."

Her tongue darted out and wet her lips, "A black lace thong, Sir, very, very small."

"Are they wet?"

"Fuck yes, Sir. They're soaked!"

"Then you can take them off first... and hand them to me."

There was another sharp inhale of breath from her; her whole body seemed to shudder with needy arousal for a moment before she nodded. Bunching the hem of her dress up, she reached beneath it and sighed heavily as she dragged the panties down her legs. Sure to her description, they were black, lace, and microscopic. She reached down and scooped them off the floor, then prowled across the room, her eyes locked on mine, took my hand when she was close enough, and placed her panties into it.

To say they were soaked was a monumental understatement. They were saturated, they were almost as much liquid as fabric, and they were searing hot. I clenched my jaw as I looked down at them, then back up into her eyes as I tucked them into my pocket before walking past her and dropping onto one of the sofas, my arms stretched along the back of it.

"Now you can take the dress off," I called over to her. "Then you can crawl over here to help me strip, too."

She was practically panting now as she returned her hands to the flimsy straps holding it onto her shoulder, brushing one off first and then the other.

In the bar downstairs, I remembered thinking that a single enthusiastic motion would have the dress falling off her with practically zero encouragement from the outside world. The garment looked like it had been spray-painted onto her body. So imagine my surprise when the thing didn't slip an inch. It stayed firmly and defiantly where it was until she hooked her fingers into the material beneath her arms and started to drag it downward.

Of course, any thoughts in my mind about the physics-defying properties of her clothing were immediately banished when her tits bounced into view. Somewhat compressed by the tightness of her dress, they were even bigger in the flesh, standing proud on her chest with all of the gravity immunity of a woman in the prime of her youth and topped with a set of nipples that looked hard enough to cut glass if put to proper use.

I licked my lips and leaned back as I watched her.

All men want a good-looking woman; it's a simple matter of biology. It's not that men are willfully shallow or superficial, although some of them absolutely are; it's a product of evolution. A strong argument could be made that outward beauty was a sign of good genes, and those good genes were attractive to our earliest ancestors. Without a natural and totally uncontrollable desire to mate with the most beautiful women of the tribe, the human species may never have made it as far as it had. However, there is also a problem singularly unique to beautiful women in this day and age.

They know they are beautiful.

There is an arrogance that comes with that, a cockiness, a narcissism, and a sense of entitlement gained from a lifetime of people falling over themselves to give them anything that they want. They had been told that their looks make them special, and having heard that lie for most of their lives, they grew to believe it. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, this turns these women into conceited, self-important, manipulative attention whores who can find said attention in any bar in the world or with a single, simple, provocative photo uploaded to social media. They are, by far, the worst type of woman imaginable.

This girl - and I still didn't know her name - was a perfect example. The way she moved, the way she held my eyes, and the confidence she held in herself wasn't gained by hard work, self-betterment, or self-sacrifice; it was garnered from years of being told she was hot, that she was sexy, years of having lesser men fall over themselves to give her the attention she had become addicted to and reliant on. But therein lay the solution to that problem: I just switched off the part of my brain that gave a shit about any of that. If I wanted to get to know her, if I wanted to date her, if I wanted anything more from her than just that night, those characteristics would repulse me. But I didn't. I wasn't looking for a new mate, I wasn't looking to fall in love, I had a need, and she was a tool to let me get those frustrations out.

For that purpose, she was perfect.

I should be clear here. I had not done anything to her aside from the passive effect of finding me attractive that every other girl in the bar had been subjected to as well. I had not made her talk dirty to me, I had not made her act slutty toward me, nor I had not imbued her with this undeserved sense of confidence; that was all her. I had not even made her act submissive toward me, I had simply spoken to her in a manner fitting my current mood, and for a girl who had almost certainly spent her life being put on a pedestal by simpering suitors and pretend alpha males, she had responded to it wholeheartedly.

But none of that mattered. Not in the way it had done with the other women in my life. Becky and Philippa were nurses, they had worked hard to get where they were, and both of them were filled with the self-doubts of real women who had seen the rough side of dating despite being at least as beautiful to me as this girl was. The same could be said for Samantha to an even greater degree. Evie's mind was fascinating, Olivia had a personality that drew me in like a moth to a flame, and Charlotte - recent events aside - had earned my trust under the hardest possible circumstances. These were real women, these were strong women, and these were women who had earned any and all attention that was aimed their way. They had worked hard to get where they were, they had made sacrifices and mistakes, they had fallen on hard times, they had faced struggles, and they had pulled themselves out the other side. They had been given nothing for free; even Charlotte - who had changed herself in the same ways I had - had been forced to deal with adversity that a human could never comprehend. I found it impossible to respect anyone who had life handed to them on a silver platter. Real people came with scars; it was those scars that not only made them unique, but it made them beautiful where it mattered. That built character, and when the chips were down, it was a woman's character that made a man fall in love, not a nice set of tits.

Although, in this case, they were a really nice set of tits.

The abdomen was pretty nice, too, her waist curving inwards in that magazine-cover way that inevitably drew the eye before flaring out into a set of hips that made the caveman part of my brain think of nothing but breeding.

Finally, she released her dress, and gravity immediately dragged it down to the floor around her feet. Her pussy was glistening, her lips puffy and engorged, swollen and pink with the arousal that pumped through her veins. She stood there for a few moments, her lips curling into a satisfied smile as her eyes swam over my response. Happy that my reaction to her was tenting in the pants of my suit, she sank to her knees, her eyes moving back to mine as she lowered her upper torso onto her hands and started to crawl toward me.

To say she moved with a feline-like grace was like saying a hurricane is a bit wet; she was like a panther stalking its prey; it was effortless yet powerful, every muscle moving the exact amount it needed to move her forward - no more, no less - it was slow and seductive and enough for me to inaudibly moan at her approach. It wasn't far to the spot by the door that held her dress to the seat on which I was sitting, maybe twenty feet, but she turned every inch of that distance into an expression of performance art.

I had to give it to her; despite all my previously announced disdain for her kind of woman, I had issued a challenge to her as part of my assertion of dominance, and it was a challenge she was taking to heart. She really wanted to be the best I had ever had, and perhaps she would be, but she wasn't going to leave this apartment until she had given it her best shot. Maybe it was a challenge to her pride, maybe her ego, maybe to her very sense of identity. I didn't know, and I didn't really care. She wanted to make sure I was as turned on by her act as I possibly could be, and in that, she was being wildly successful.

It took her a few agonizingly long minutes to reach me from her starting point, and by the time she had, every part of my mind not connected to the moment and what was about to happen had been silenced. I parted my legs between them, and she dutifully crawled between them. Her hands rested on my thighs, sliding upwards as she looked hungrily into my eyes. Her hands finally reached the buckle of my belt, and she paused, looking at me and waiting for permission. I nodded to her to continue, and her face lit up with another anticipatory smile. "What's your name?"

"Amanda," she purred, her eyes now fixed on the bulge she was working to release. "What's yours?"

"Pete, but you can call me Sir."

"Fuck, you are sexy." She groaned as my belt came undone, and her fingers started working and the button of my pants, popping it open and starting to work them down with me lifting my hips a little to help her. "And fucking huge!" she added with a moan as the outline of my hardness under my boxers came into view. With her hair already in a ponytail, she grinned up at me and lowered her head down, and nuzzled her face against my cock, rubbing the bulge over her cheeks and dragging her tongue over the material. She mouthed my cock, humming as she dragged her lips over my cock through the fabric of my boxers. It was achingly hard by now, throbbing and twitching under the touch of her lips and her tongue and the heat of her breath washing over it. It didn't take her hands long to move, though, hooking into my waistband and dragging my boxers down as well.

My cock sprung out as soon as it was clear of the elastic, and with her keeping her head close to her prize as they were removed, it jumped up and slapped against her cheek, pulling an excited, teasing giggle from Amanda's parted lips. She didn't even wait til they were all the way down before she wrapped her hand around me, pressed my cock to my abdomen, leaned forward, and dragged her tongue from the very base of me all the way up to the head of my cock.

I sucked in a deep, long, hissed breath as she did, my eyes staying squarely on hers as she maintained eye contact with me for the entire time. For a moment, she reminded me of Samantha, confident enough in her sexuality and her abilities to make something of a game of this, but whereas Samantha and I were equals, and I was relatively new to my own sexual prowess, the same couldn't be said here. Amanda was completely under my spell. This side of me was one that just needed to fuck, and that air from me was driving her wild. While Samantha wanted to match me, wanted to beat me, wanted to show me what she had, Amanda simply wanted to impress me, she wanted to live up to the challenge I had issued. It took her a few tortuous seconds to reach the tip of my cock, where she swirled her tongue around the head a few times, smearing the pearl of precum onto it and tasting me with a heady groan before she sealed her lips around my crown and sunk her mouth onto me.

The sensation and the pleasure were exquisite, and I groaned deeply as she took me into her mouth, her tongue working against the base of me the entire time and her eyes staying focused with laser intensity onto mine. There was a sparkle behind them, a twinkle; she could see the pleasure she was giving me washing over my face, and she loved the fact that it was her doing that to me. She pushed down until the head of my cock reached the back of her throat and pulled back, starting to bob her head on the first two-thirds of my cock. Her tongue never stopped, her lips never lessened their seal around me, and they dragged over the bulging veins that ran the length of my cock. Over and over again, she pulled her lips back to the very tip of me, swirled her tongue through the precum gathering there, and then sank straight back down again.

This wasn't a blowjob as much as it was a display of cock worshiping, and with my breathing getting heavier and more ragged with every bob of her head, that sparkle flashed a little brighter in her eyes, and her lips tightened as she tried to smile around my solid, granite hard shaft.

With a single, hard thrust, she buried all of me into her mouth, forcing my cock through the resistance at the back of her throat without so much as a clench of a gag reflex, and swallowed every remaining inch of me. My head rolled back, and I gasped loudly, moaning as she throated me; it took a few seconds to look back down into those twinkling, self-satisfied eyes. She knew she had taken me by surprise; nobody other than Becky had ever been able to take all of me into their bulging throat so effortlessly, let alone on the first attempt. She just held there, swallowing around my shaft and my cock head as she bobbed that one final inch in and out of her, just enough to keep the sensation going and keep me building toward my high.

Of course, she had no idea that my high would arrive precisely when I wanted it to, but that didn't mean I wouldn't reward her for her efforts. My hand came up and gripped her hair tightly, holding her down for another few seconds before pulling her back up again. My cock popped out of her mouth and she looked up at me again panting. "Please Sir, please cum in my mouth and let me swallow you. I will be a good girl for you."

I didn't answer, not with words anyway. The time for lazy game-playing was over and I pulled myself to my feet, towering over her as she was kept kneeling before me. With my free hand, I pushed my cock back down towards her lips and speared into her mouth, thrusting in and out of her over and over again. I was face fucking her, and the glow behind her eyes told me that she was loving it. That part still wasn't particularly important to me, but I didn't want to actually hurt her or anything. My pleasure came first, but that didn't mean that hers was not a consideration at all.

She had her lips sealed tightly around me; her hands moved to clasp against the small of her back as I tilted her head up to take more of my forceful thrusts. Her tongue never stopped working, and she moaned happily as I sunk in and out of her throat over and over again, bulging it around the girth of me as I took what I wanted out of her.

My balls, heavy and full, slapped against her chin; it was only the angle of her face that stopped her nose from being crushed into my toned abs with every thrust. Over and over again, I took her throat, our eyes locked on each other as I alternated between fucking her mouth onto my cock and holding her still so I could plow into her. Long, powerful, consuming strokes slid my cock from tip to base into her pillowy, drooling lips; each withdrawal pulled the saliva from her throat out with me, and it didn't take long for a frothy ring of throat slime to gather around my cock root.

I had no intention of dragging this out; this was a sprint for my own satisfaction, not a marathon to prove some sort of point, and I let the pressure and the churn build in my balls. She felt it, of course, that extra throb against the tight seal of her lips, the increasingly profuse leaking of my precum onto her tongue, the heavier, panted breaths, and the more urgent flare of my eyes staring down at her, and she started fucking herself onto my cock with every ounce of power and hunger that she could muster.

With the walls on my own release relaxed, it didn't take long for that familiar churn to build in my balls and to feel them tighten as they beat against her chin. Her eyes were still on mine, and her own huffed breaths washed from her nose and over me. I didn't need to read her thoughts to feel how much she craved it. She was panting for it, literally and figuratively; her throat and her lips were vibrating with her moaned need, and her eyes screamed out with the hunger she was demonstrating with every insistently forceful bob of her head.

With a loud, carnal, primal grunt. I erupted into her mouth. Her squeak of joy devolved into a long, sultry, happy moan as the first rope shot straight down her throat before I pulled her head back to the tip of me, bobbing her head onto me to milk rope after powerful rope of my hot, thick seed onto her tongue. I could feel it swirling through my load, not just letting it pool there, but making sure that each and every one of her taste buds were bathed in the taste of me.

Slowly, keeping the seal of her lips tight onto my shaft, she pulled herself off me, her eyes still fixed on mine as she released my cock from the hungry confines of her mouth, opening it to show me the massive, pent-up load gathered on her tongue, and waiting for her next command.

I paused and watched her longer than was strictly necessary, making sure she savored every drop of it. "Swallow all of it, my slut."

With another twinkle in her eyes, she closed her mouth and gulped it all down in a single hard swallow. "Mmm fuck, you taste good, Sir. Thank you for your hot cum."

She looked back down at my cock, ready to suckle it back into her mouth, but froze when her eyes reached my still-solid cock. The look of surprise on her face was almost comical. Guys came, and then they went soft; it was an almost universal truth of the vast majority of girls' experiences, yet my cock was still as rigid as it had been when she freed it from my pants. She looked up at me in astonishment, "You're still hard," she whispered, as if speaking the words aloud would banish the illusion and ruin the moment.

"Mmhmm," I smirked back at her and then yanked her to her feet by her hair, spinning her around to face the sofa and then shoving her forward to bend over it. She squealed in surprise at first, but as she realized what was about to happen to her, her breath turned into heated, panted moans, looking back over her shoulder at me.

"Please, Sir," she mewled, wiggling her ass back at me. "Please fuck me! I need your cock in me, Fucking ruin me!"

I landed a hard slap on her ass with my free hand as the other hand yanked her head back to arch her spine, presenting her dripping pussy to me. She was beyond wet, her juices were trickling down the inside of her thighs already, and the scent of her was filling the air, but I was not here to enjoy the sights of youthful female arousal... My cock smashed into her with the power of a freight train, knocking the air out of her lungs with the force fucked into her before she composed herself. "Oh fucking God, Yes.. fuck.. Holy shit!" she gasped as her fists gripped the folds in the fabric of the sofa. I didn't give her time to compose herself and immediately started hammering every inch into her with long, powerful, ruthless thrust, and landing one hard slap onto her clapping, bouncing ass after another.

"Told you you'd earn more of them," I growled.

"Oh.. fuck... Thank... you.. Sir... Oh god... you fuck... me... So good!" she screamed between grunting, panted, breathless breaths.

Her ass was practically glowing, her skin burning with one layered handprint after another, my balls already refilled - thanks to my recuperative powers - were slapping hard against her swollen, throbbing clit, and her juices were coating my cock. Another hard yank of her hair turned her spine into a "U" shape, and her face pointed up at the ceiling as she was taken. That is what this was; it was my taking her, it was using her, it was taking every ounce of my anger and frustration at recent events and taking them out on her. Faye was right; I needed this.

"Oh holy fucking shit, I'm going to fucking cum already," Amanda screamed out at the ceiling. "Oh my fuckiing fuck! Pleeasseee..."

"Please, what?" I growled back.

"Please can I cum, please can I cum.. Pleaseletmecummm!"

I smirked to myself, holding back on the command for an almost inhumane amount of time before answering. "Cum hard, or don't cum at all!"

Her body stiffened immediately; her breath seemed to freeze in her throat, and her mouth fell open in a silent scream as her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Then she exploded. Her juices squirted out of her as her whole body started to thrash and convulse, her legs shaking so hard they were practically vibrating. A howling breath was sucked back in before the words started. "Fuck I'm cumming, oh god, oh god, oh fucking god! Fuck... so good,... too much... don't stop, please Daddy, don't stop!"

I quirked my head to the side at the name but didn't answer, just landed another slap onto her ass and pulled on her hair harder, pulling her upper body off the sofa until her back was pressed against my heaving chest, not slowing my relentless assault on her spasming pussy for a moment. My hand on her ass immediately reached around her, clamping onto one of her bouncing tits, and palming it roughly, rolling her nipple between the vee of my fingers and pressing her back against me while the hand in her hair released its grip and moved down between her legs to start strumming furiously onto her clit. "You are going to cum again, slut, and you are going to milk me into you."

She was too lost to her pleasure to respond, too far gone for me to even be able to tell if she had registered what I had said. She was held in place, the aftershocks of her first massive orgasm being overwhelmed already by the rapid climb to the second. Her clit was being strummed and tapped hard enough to drive her wild, and her g-spot was at the complete mercy of my cock, and this angle and my cock was in no mood to show it any. The only response to my command she was able to give was a series of guttural, lustful grunts and incoherent, moaned drivel, but that was fine with me. This wasn't a competitive sport; this was me taking what I wanted from her. I just redoubled my efforts and kept driving into her.

It didn't take too long for her to topple over the edge again and she sobbed loudly, the only sound she could manage as her cunt clamped down onto me with the power of an industrial trash compactor. My own high, now that I was satisfied, wasn't far behind, and with a guttural bestial roar, I drove into her and erupted.

The world went white for a moment as the blinding pleasure washed through me. It was a release in every meaning of the word, not just my seed being hosed into her, but a huge part of the anger and frustrations that had been building up in me over the past few months. This wasn't making love, Amanda meant nothing to me, this was just a fuck, but in focusing entirely on my own desires - possibly for the first time in my life - I reached a level of almost transcendent self-realization. There were things I needed, there were things I wanted, and there were things inside me that needed to be exorcized, the stress and anger foremost among them. It was not the way Faye had explained it to me, but she had been right. This wouldn't have worked with Charlotte, or even with Evie or Fiona.. This had to be animalistic and anonymous.

And for the first time in more months than I cared to count, I felt better.