Oryen wished ardently that Reyz's reassurance affected the warm glow of approval he craved, but his brother's absence at the tryouts, and in the past week in general, picked at old wounds. His success felt meagre anyway—faylan presented its own problems regardless of whether it helped the Alphas favour him.

He was barely a werewolf yet, a Fen, and the sport wasn't known for being gentle.

He wasn't given much time to contemplate it all. Oryen froze when he saw who awaited him. Beau leaned against the wall in a secluded archway, affecting an indolent posture of easy grace, but the stone he leant against...

It was where Oryen had hidden the scalpel just a few days prior.

"I see you made the team," said Beau.

Warily, "Here to take pot shots?"

"No." Beau looked past him into the arena. "To question your motivation."

"It looked like fun."

"Fun that could get you killed." Beau straightened. Oryen tried not to let his eyes dart to the wiggly stone that had been under his shoulder. "There's more to it. Your brother?"

Oryen's skin erupted in gooseflesh. How much did Beau know about Lazro's circumstances? What was public knowledge, and what was private? Oryen didn't know where to step, which landmines to avoid, what sort of lies to tell. He chose the thing closest to the truth.

"He's my older brother. I just wanted to impress him."

"But he's not here."

Stated in a factual, unaffected tone, but it robbed the breath from Oryen's lungs. Beau, with uncanny intuition, sought out his tenderest bruises and pressed them.

"Old habits die hard," Oryen said weakly.

"Do you think he'd be impressed if what happened to Evrynne happened to you?"

Desperately, Oryen reached for his most familiar defense—sarcasm. "You worried about me all of a sudden? I'm touched."

Beau's eyes narrowed. He raised a hand. His wrists were fine-boned, fingers slender and long with prominent knuckles. Built for playing music. He used that elegant hand to caress the wiggly stone in the wall with the backs of two knuckles, a pantomimed gesture of a lover's affection. Frigid terror flooded Oryen's lungs. He ceased to breathe.

"Did you think I wouldn't notice?" Beau said.

"You didn't say anything."

"I wanted to know if you'd go through with it."

Oryen was too ashamed to speak. All that time he'd spent paralyzed by memory, had Beau been watching? It felt more violating than the moment Beau had cut open his shirt and laid his worst fears bare.

He looked around. No one else was nearby, no one to overhear or see them. It was just the two of them.

Oryen took a few steps forward. Beau stiffened, raised his chin. He didn't back up, but the rigidity of his posture gave Oryen pause.

Through his own terror, it never occurred to him that Beau might be afraid of him too.

He considered it. He wasn't a full werewolf, but with less than two weeks to the full moon, Oryen's strength had grown exponentially. His senses were keener than ever. He'd adopted instincts and habits both new and alarming. All things which made it a very simple matter to take Beau's head in his hand and smash it into the stone.

Beau loathed him. He was starting to hate Beau too. But the thought of killing him was repulsive. It shouldn't have been—Beau had stated plainly he'd love to see Oryen dead. If Oryen had any survival instincts left, he should want to rid himself of Beau as a threat.

Instead, something compelled him to pry the stone away from the wall and take the scalpel from its hiding place. Beau's gaze fixed on it, wary and prepared. Oryen flipped it in his hand and pressed the handle into Beau's chest. Beau's heart thumped against it. Oryen felt the vibration. The slight shiver.

Whatever threats, loathing and fear existed between them, the scalpel felt like an extension of them.

"You do it," Oryen said.

Beau scoffed. "Why would I do that?"

"You want to hurt me—"

"I can think of better ways."

"You want me dead, but not yet. I'm still useful. You're right, faylan's a bad idea. I could be outed before you're ready. Whatever you're planning, I'm a part of it now, so..." He pressed the handle a little harder into Beau's sternum.

Beau reached up. Instead of taking the scalpel, his hand wrapped claw-like around Oryen's, blunt fingernails digging into Oryen's knuckles.

"Why don't you do it yourself?"

"I can't."

"You can. The bite would've hurt worse." Beau's hand slid up to the pinkish brown scars on Oryen's forearm. Tooth marks.

"It's not the pain," Oryen said.

Beau's dark brows—an incongruous contrast to his ashen hair—drew together in incredulous understanding. "What? Sentiment?"

Oryen swallowed the lump in his throat. "Sure."

Disgust drenched the gravel of Beau's voice as he let out a noise of derision that, for reasons Oryen couldn't parse, made him feel a pang of something like longing. Beau's hand was a vice around his arm, his unbroken gaze sharp as a weapon, but his hate was intimate. New. It drew Oryen in. A careless swimmer caught in a perilous undertow.

Abruptly, Beau released Oryen's arm and took the scalpel from him. Oryen's heart kicked, wondering if Beau would steal the instrument and leave Oryen in his predicament.

He turned and walked away. "Come with me."

Curious relief tickled Oryen's senses. He followed. Beau led him through the tunnels of Kolraga. The sound of running water trickled down the twisting corridors. The source was a fountain spring in the centre of a torchlit courtyard. The scent of chlorophyll filled Oryen's nose as they emerged in the garden. He looked up to see a halo of twilight, the mountain rising up in a ring all around them. An altar, not unlike the one in the temple where he'd reunited with Lazro for the first time, was carved into the rock wall. A few unlit candles surrounded the wolf statue like wax penitents. Beau took a lighting taper and held it to one of the wall torches, then used it to light each candle. He held the scalpel's blade in the flame. He turned it like he was roasting a marshmallow, not sterilizing something he intended to cut Oryen with.

"Sit."

Oryen sat. "What if someone sees us?"

"Your job to keep an ear out, but no one comes here much."

"How do you know?"

"Lie down."

Oryen took his shirt off and haltingly lay on the stones. At the foot of the altar, he felt like a sacrificial lamb. Beau, kneeling beside him, pulled up his sleeves to the elbows. Greenish veins stood out on his olive skin from knuckles to mid-forearm. Oryen clenched his jaw and waited for the knife to fall. He didn't expect Beau would give him time to prepare himself or ask if he was ready. Beau didn't do either of those things, but he did wait.

"I come here often," Beau said eventually. A delayed response to Oryen's question. "To be alone."

Oryen waited. Above, the first glimmer of a star poked through the twilit expanse of sky. The silence stretched until Oryen tilted his head to look at Beau. The contrast between his pale hair and pitch eyes was stark in the candlelight.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked.

Beau grimaced. He leaned forward and braced a hand against Oryen's chest. The scalpel hovered over the tattoo, its blade in line with the crow's beak. Oryen braced himself for the first flinch of pain. It took longer than expected. Like for all Beau's cutting words, when it came time to act on them something held him back. Finally, the cold glide of metal sliced through Oryen's nerves. Despite all preparation, his body recoiled. Beau pinned him down to stop him from moving. He grit his teeth and endured. The blade cleaved an icy line like chemical burn. It hurt far worse than the needle of the tattoo machine. He sensed his body fighting the intrusion, fortifying against it, trying to knit back together even as Beau carved away the crow's wings plume by plume.

"Why are you helping me?"

Beau grunted, "Do you want me to slip? Hold still."

"Didn't think you'd agree to it, is all." Oryen had to speak through slow, halting breaths. His skin broke out in feverish sweat, an adrenaline response to the wound. Blood slid hot down his pectoral muscle, over his ribs.

"Doesn't change anything," Beau said.

"No?"

"No." He ran the blade over the crow's breast, slicing skin like he was peeling an apple. "You're still a Fen. Can't carve that out. It's in here." He stabbed a finger into the centre of Oryen's chest, over his hammering heart. "Couldn't even do this yourself, you're still hanging onto it."

Perhaps it was the vulnerable position of lying prone while Beau filletted him, but he said, "Never felt like I belonged anywhere before them. And even then..."

Beau paused. His calculating gaze held Oryen's for the space of ten thunderous heartbeats. Oryen counted them. Beau's venomous hatred was like truth serum, the candlelit statues like the screen of a confessional.

"I'm here," Oryen said. A tool. A weapon, discarded. Used for years in service of a military that had lied to him. Quarantine. Was anyone even looking for a cure?

Beau took the knife to him again.

"That's why I'm doing it."

Oryen swallowed thickly. "So you can take away from me what I took from you?"

"It's not enough," Beau said. His tone was suddenly vicious. "I haven't seen you with Lazro."

Just an observation, but it cut deeper than the scalpel taking away a crow's foot. Oryen closed his eyes against the pain and the darkening sky. "I was thirteen when he went missing. Parents turned the town upside down looking for their golden boy before giving up. It was a lifetime ago. We don't really know each other anymore."

"So you resented him."

Oryen opened his eyes to stare at Beau incredulously. "I idolized him."

He regretted saying it immediately. Beau excelled at finding vulnerabilities to exploit, and Oryen had so many. He didn't know why he was here, spilling his guts to the last person on earth he should. Perhaps because it wasn't possible for Beau to loathe him more. No risk of love lost.

He felt stupid, but the look in Beau's hard expression made it difficult to regret his admissions. The feelings tangled between them were thorny as barbed wire, but deeply real.

Beau turned back to what he was doing. "I'm almost done."

Impulsively, "Let me."

Beau scoffed. "Bit late, isn't it?"

Oryen gripped Beau's wrist to stop him finishing. They froze in a mirror of earlier, when Beau had held Oryen the same way. Oryen sat up, and Beau leaned back on his heels, still holding the scalpel in his fist. After a breath, he opened his fingers, offering it back to Oryen palm up. Oryen took it and looked down at the mess of his chest. The tattoo hadn't been too large, about the size of a hand. The wound seemed larger. It had already scabbed over in places. The freshest cuts leaked and he wiped the rivulets away before they seeped into the waistband of his pants.

All that was left were the tail feathers. Oryen's hands trembled and his chest ached, heartbeat mauling him from the inside out. He held the scalpel to the tattoo just like he had in the shower, but with a different sort of conviction.

This wasn't just survival.

He sliced the tail away. He thought of Edrik as he did it. It hurt a lot worse than when Beau wielded the blade. He wished it was a relief to be rid of it, but instead he thought, What a waste, and felt something like grief.

It was done though.

Beau stood. "It doesn't change anything."

He left Oryen kneeling at the altar with the knife in his hand.