Page 3 of Feral Monsters
“Because that’s what you’ll be soon enough,” I informed him. Confusion bled onto his features as he lifted his gaze from my brother to stare up at me. I rose from the coffee table, where I’d been perched since we got home, and leaned over the couch, over him, bracing my hands on either side of his head. He swallowed thickly, lifting his chin to meet my eyes with his pretty ones. “Wraith and I are going to find every person who ever violated you, whoever hurt you, and we’re going to deliver them to you—with pretty bows and flowers, if you wish—so you can have your revenge.”
He shook his head, that anger I knew he held bleeding through his stoic expression. “I’m not them,” he growled.
I hummed. “You’re right, little killer. You’re not.” I gripped his chin and tilted his head even further back so he could look nowhere but right at me. “But you are ours. And our boy? He’s got a dark, burning anger inside him just begging to be released so he can obliterate everyone in his path. And we plan to help you.”
“So sure you know me?” he taunted, and fuck, it made my dick hard. Merit was ready to meet me challenge for challenge. To show me he wouldn’t just lay over and take what I was dishing out at him. He was testing his boundaries. Trying to find where the lines were drawn. But what he hadn’t realized yet was boundaries were nonexistent now. There were no lines to cross.
“I know you very well, little killer,” I rasped. “And I can’t wait to show you how much.”
Wraith appeared beside me, and Merit sucked in a sharp breath of surprise, his pupils dilating as his gaze flicked between the two of us. Wraith pushed me away before leaning in to scoop Merit off the couch. “What—” Merit spluttered, his fingers curling around Wraith’s shoulders.
“You need rest now,” Wraith told him, carrying him toward his room. I followed because like fuck was Wraith getting him all to himself tonight. “We will revisit all this in the morning.”
“I don’t get my own room?” Merit asked, a challenge in his voice.
I met his gaze over my brother’s shoulder. “Turns out, there is a boundary,” I murmured. He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles, but he’d get used to me speaking out loud without context soon enough. “You won’t be sleeping alone, Merit. Not tonight. Not ever again. Some nights, you might only be with one of us, but most nights, you’ll be sandwiched right between us.”
“And if I don’t want that?” he argued, though there was no real heat behind it. Just like I knew he would, he was already starting to crave how we… cared about him.
“Tough,” Wraith told him before gently depositing him on the bed. “Get used to it, little killer. You’re stuck with us.”
He grunted. “Freedom, my ass,” he grumbled.
I chose not to respond. He’d soon realize he had plenty of freedom, so long as it meant he wasn’t separated from me and Wraith. Soon, he’d crave the freedom he found in being with us both, where he was safe, protected, and could do whatever the fuck he wanted without fear of anyone ever violating him again.
Wraith and I would make sure of it.
Two
Wraith
Merit hadn’t taken long to fall asleep. He’d been full of trepidation about sleeping in the same bed as us, but the moment he was on my soft bed, his head resting on hundred-dollar pillows, swaddled by blankets and sheets that cost several hundred dollars, he’d lost the battle. And I couldn’t blame him. He had to be exhausted. We’d been watching him long enough to know how taxing those runs in the forest were on him mentally, not to mention physically. Add that to all the trauma he’d endured with this most recent master…
Ike grunted and lifted his phone from his lap. “Pops is calling,” he muttered, pushing up from the chair he’d been occupying.
Neither of us had gotten into bed with Merit as we’d told him we would, though we hadn’t left him alone. Even now, I wasn’t keen on leaving him on his own, even if he was asleep. But if Pops was calling in the middle of the night, that meant he either had an emergency job for one of us, or he’d found out what we’d done. My money was on him knowing we’d essentially kidnapped Merit, and he was ready to rip us a new asshole.
Which also meant if we didn’t answer his phone call, he would show up here. And that was the last thing we needed. Pops was the biggest monster of us all, and stepping out of line like this would have dire consequences. I could probably calm him down and get him to understand, but Ike? Textbook psychopath Ike? That was a laughable matter. Despite Dad working hard every single day to make sure we all knew how to fake having normal human emotions, Ike hadn’t grasped it.
Ike and I were two of a set of quadruplets, and while all of us were close, even with our youngest brother, Sabbath, Ike and I were the closest. He relied on me to give him his social cues, to tell him when it was okay to be his normal self and when he needed to, as he called it, “fake his humanity”.
I jerked my chin toward the door. “Let’s take his call,” I muttered. Casting one last glance at Merit, I reluctantly followed Ike out of the room, shutting the door right before Ike swiped his thumb across the screen to answer Pops’s call.
“Pops,” Ike drawled.
“I told you not to get involved. To let me handle this,” Pops growled, fury coating his words. “But you did what the fuck you wanted anyway, didn’t you? And then, you were sloppy about it. Leaving bodies? We don’t leave bodies lying around. Have you two lost your fucking minds?”
“Winston…” I heard Dad murmur, trying to keep him calm, which I was thankful for. Pops losing his shit could have dire consequences… like putting us six feet under. He had no soft spot for us. The only kid he was soft for was Sabbath because he wasn’t like us. Sabbath had taken after Dad—looked just like him, too.
“They had him in the woods again,” I informed our parents. “They were ready to shoot him with rubber bullets. He’s been through enough, Dad.” I could get anyone to sympathize with me, it was him. “You couldn’t expect us to just let that happen, could you?”
“I expected you to follow the fucking rules, Wraith. I might have expected this from Ike, Onyx, or Vargas, but not you. You’re level-headed. You follow the rules. You don’t step out of line,” Pops snapped, not giving Dad a chance to respond.
I blew out a quiet breath. “I had to step out of line for him, Pops. I’ve been forced to stand on the sidelines and play this waiting game for months. No more. Never again. You can do what you want with me and Ike, but Merit stays protected. We promised him no one would ever hurt him again. We promised he would be safe from here on out.”
Pops made a sound in the back of his throat that revealed his clear disgust with us. I bit back a grunt of annoyance that we were even dealing with this when we were adults capable of making our own decisions. Ike leaned against the wall, his expression empty. No doubt, he was bored of this conversation, but out of respect for our parents, he wouldn’t hang up the phone.
It would upset Dad, and none of us liked upsetting him. It made us as uncomfortable as upsetting our neurotypical little brother, Sabbath.
