Page 37 of Guardian of Exile

“The thing about that, though? None of us knew he was a Hound before that. I don’t even think Maruca did. As far as any of us knew, he didn’t have magic. He could have left me out there, never had to say anything because he didn’t talk, and they’d blame Uncle Beau for leaving a couple kids to their own devices.” Morgen shook his head. “Still can’t believe that crazy motherfucker did that. But anyway, Kaden found me, pulled me out, and I thanked him by yelling at him about how he’d basically ruined my life.”

Nyx shook her head. “I’m still having trouble imagining this version of you.”

He beamed at her. “I like to think I’ve grown. Anyway, that’s the only time I’ve ever seen Kaden really break. He opened his mouth and five years of pent-up frustration came out of that guy. To this day, I’ve never heard him talk as much as he did then. Shocked the hell out of me. I didn’t think he could talk, even though all the healers Mom had sent him to said there was nothing physically preventing him.

“Anyway, that was that. Been thick as thieves ever since, and I’ve been trying to make it up to Mom and him ever since.”

The conversation lulled for a minute as they watched through the coffee shop window as the pink-haired woman talked to someone at this billboard the same way Valerie had talked to Nyx.

“You have an odd look on your face,” Morgen said.

“I guess I’m just realizing I never really knew him, you know?” And because she didn’t want any commentary on that, she said, “So is all of that—everything you told me—why Kaden doesn’t want to go home? Or talk to your mom?”

Morgen sighed. “He never really fit in, even after we worked things out and I tried to repair the social damage I’d done. People tolerated him, he tolerated them, and that was about as good as it got. With Mom—she knows he loves her. When we all went into the Enforcers, he sent her half of everything he made, even though by that point she didn’t need the money anymore. She told him she didn’t need it, but he kept doing it anyway, right up until the day all of this shit started.” He drew his finger in a circle, indicating the fallout from the Harvester’s theft.

“He sends her something on her birthday every year, but yeah, he only goes home when Maruca and I drag him there.”

They didn’t talk much after that. They followed Valerie and the others to another coffee shop, did some more waiting, then did a lot of walking that took them nearly back to where they’d started, where Valerie and the others enter a nondescript looking building. The entire building appeared to house only a single business: The Chance Foundation.

Nyx dug her phone out of her back pocket and looked it up. The website she found belonged to a shelter and resource center. Once she went through the exhaustive list of people they helped—basically anyone, with different divisions for various needs—she understood why the foundation took up the entire building. Especially since it had its own in-house health clinic.

“Think it belongs to our guy?” Morgen asked.

“Only if he’s worth a few hundred million,” Nyx answered. She couldn’t fathom the amount of money it would take to run something like this, and while the foundation was listed as a 501c3 charity, she couldn’t find a donations tab anywhere on it. Which told her it was run by one fabulously wealthy person who wanted to claim it on their taxes but didn’t want anyone else telling them how to run it. The required non-profit board was either fictional, or entirely under the thumb of the foundation’s primary benefactor.

She flashed back to the newspaper articles she’d read. That kid—Clay Gales—had been the heir to a substantial fortune after his adoption. Maybe she’d been wrong to dismiss the possibility that he could be Tristen Veld.

She added his name to the search field along with the foundation’s name, but nothing came up. It didn’t mean anything—burying the true ownership of a company wasn’t all that hard if you had the money to do it—but it did mean she couldn’t confirm or deny it at the moment.

“Should we go in?” Morgen asked.

“I don’t think there’s any point. Even if Tristen owns it, he’s unlikely to be inside. And since we should have an invitation to meet him in the next week, I’d rather not risk tipping him off that we’re looking for him. Besides, we can always see if Kaden can pick up his trail here later, if we want to find him before Valerie calls.”

Nyx wasn’t certain she did want to find him sooner. Because if Tristen was Clay, she highly doubted arranging a meeting with him would be easy.

“Let’s do it now,” Morgen said, pulling out his phone. “If we leave Kaden and Evra unsupervised much longer, they may kill each other.”