Page 4 of Feral Monsters
“Bring him here. If he is going to be around, he needs to understand what he’s been brought into.”
“Not until he wakes up,” Ike said, finally speaking up.
“Ike…” Pops warned, his voice dropping an octave.
“I said what I said,” Ike retorted, not giving a fuck about orders or stepping on Pops’s toes. “He needs rest. He has injuries. We will bring him home, but not a moment sooner. That’s my offer.”
Pops growled, clearly about to lose his shit for being disobeyed, but suddenly, Dad was on the line. “Okay, Ike,” Dad soothed, always the mediator between us and Pops. “That’s fine. We’ll see him tomorrow, okay? Find out what he likes to eat, and I’ll make sure it’s here. I’m sure he’d like some food.”
“We already fed him,” I griped.
Dad hummed like he always did when we got irate. Some fucking how, it soothed the monsters within us. “I’m sure you did, Wraith. But I think a home-cooked meal will do him well, too. Do you have clothes for him, or do I need to send something?”
“He has clothes.” He had everything he needed here. Ike and I had made sure of it. What the fuck would we bring him home for if we didn’t already have everything he could possibly want or need?
While Ike didn’t work because he didn’t fit into society well enough, I did. With an IT degree, I did well enough working for a tech company that allowed me to work from home. It provided Ike and I with a place to live and allowed us to live very comfortably, especially since people paid me off-record for more shady work.
“Good. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ike ended the call and slid his phone into his pocket. “Pops will not take him from us,” Ike growled, his eyes flickering toward the bedroom door like he was already devising a plan to take Merit and run away with him.
I clapped his shoulder. “He won’t,” I agreed. “Family or not, I will slaughter anyone who tries to take him from us.”
Merit was watching us when we walked back into the room. I arched a brow at him. “Listening in, little killer?”
He huffed. “Not hard to do when you’re right outside the door. Your father sounds… pleasant.”
“He’s an acquired taste,” I informed him. Merit snorted. “You thirsty? Need more food?”
Merit shook his head and closed his eyes. “Can I have some kind of noise? The silence is… too much.”
Without prompting, Ike suddenly began to play Sleep Token from his phone on low. It was just loud enough to fill the room but was still soft enough to fall asleep too. Merit murmured, “Thank you,” and buried himself beneath the blankets once more, only half his face visible.
I sat back in the chair I’d been occupying, watching as Merit slowly fell back asleep, the blanket slowly rising and falling with each steady breath he took.
No one—not even Pops—would be taking him from us. I’d kill anyone who even attempted to do so.
Three
Merit
When I woke up, Ike was missing, but Wraith was still in the chair he’d been occupying when I’d gone to sleep the night before. The moment I moved, his eyes locked on me, like he was aware of my presence on a cellular level. And while I should have found it alarming and even frightening, I felt oddly safe.
They had rescued me. And after all the shit I’d been through in my life, all the trauma I’d endured for years, I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sure, Wraith and Ike—whose names I’d learned while they were on the phone with their fathers the night before—would be acquired tastes, I had a feeling being theirs wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.
They were taking good care of me, after all. I hadn’t been cared for like this… well, ever.
“Sleep well?” Wraith asked.
I nodded. I’d had the best night’s sleep in… well, as long as I could remember, really. How expensive was this bed? And the room had remained cool all night, unlike the hot and muggy room I usually slept in this time of year. And instead of a threadbare blanket, I was cocooned in expensive sheets and a soft comforter. And I actually had a fucking pillow.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been allowed a pillow while sleeping.
“I slept fine,” I rasped. Pushing myself into a sitting position, I looked around, but I still didn’t spot Ike anywhere. “Where’s your twin?” They had to be twins. Sure, siblings looked alike, but they had a lot of similarities in both their build and their looks. Their only major differences were their hair color. Ike’s hair was nearly black, and Wraith’s was brown. And their tattoos were different.
“Ike?” Wraith asked. I nodded. He hummed and stood, his long, lean body easily filling the room, despite how large it was. “We’re actually part of a quadruplet. We have three other brothers, two of which look identical to us.”
I shook my head. “You two aren’t identical, so I doubt the others are.”
