Page 46 of Right Hand Of The Reaper
My anger only intensified. What kind of filth did that?
I snarled at the man. No wonder he was here for painful punishment.
“Well, it’s your lucky day, Richard,” my twin crooned. “Today you get two for the price of one.”
Richard paled even further. He looked as white as the porcelain tiles on the walls. “No. Please.”
Rafe walked over to the table, and I knew which instrument he’d select. The surgeon’s scalpel. I preferred brute force when it came to torture, but my twin liked to explore slowly. To learn the most intricate way to make someone fall apart. I loved to watch him. He was methodical, attentive, focussed. I just liked to make them scream.
“Did you listen to the children when they begged you to stop?” Rafe asked, his voice calm and low.
Richard whimpered but didn’t say anything.
“I’ll take that as a no then,” Rafe said before carving a thin line into the man’s chest. Blood trickled down his torso, over his round belly and into the cheap, shitty white briefs he wore.
Rafe turned to me with a wide grin and a manic look in his eyes. “Come on brother, let’s play.”
We’d sent Richard back to his cell with barely any flesh left on his bones. His skin would grow back overnight, and he’d get to be tortured by someone else all over again tomorrow. That was his world now. His existence.
I still didn’t feel great. I still wanted nothing more than to wrap Roux in my arms and just hold her in bed. It wasn’t even about the sex anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted her, Gods, I wanted her. I wanted to sink into her and watch her fall apart between me and my twin, but it was more than that now. My heart ached for her.
Rafe was cleaning his hands, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was avoiding telling me something.
“Just tell me.”
Rafe sighed and came towards me. He wrapped his hand around my jaw and rested his forehead against mine. We’d always been close. Probably too close. But we needed each other in a way most people wouldn’t ever understand. Twin Hell Hounds were a freak of nature. They just didn’t exist. Rafe and I shared a soul, two halves that intrinsically linked us and we’d feel what the other felt. Our mother died giving birth to us and our father always blamed us for her death. I took the brunt of our father’s anger, protecting Rafe as much as I could, but if I was recovering from his last reprimand, I left Rafe vulnerable, and our father exploited that.
It wasn’t until we were big enough that we finally killed him. Ripped him to pieces and left him for someone else to find. But the damage he’d done was imprinted onto to us. We were aggressive, angry, and unstable. No one wanted us. No one until Roux. She saved us just by existing, and by choosing us. We’d be hers forever. It just sucked that she was our mate, and we couldn’t do anything about it because of the stupid fucking law that forbid any intimate connections between a Reaper and their Hounds.
Rafe’s fingers flexed in the strands of my hair. He didn’t want to upset me, but he took a deep breath and focused on my eyes. “Roux‘s mated with Atticus.”
Shock hit me first. Followed by anger. Then hate. I stepped back from my twin, unsure of what I might do. My hands shook. My chest… fuck. It hurt. I gasped and suddenly had no bones in my body to hold me up. I stumbled backwards, catching myself on the wall that was smeared in blood. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t catch my breath. Everything was slipping through my fingers, spilling from me like water, drowning me.
“Rayne,” Rafe whimpered, my emotions no doubt overwhelming him. I reached for him, fisting his shirt between my fingers as I tried to keep hold of something. But it was no use. My knees finally gave way and I wailed. A howl that contained everything I felt. All the pain and suffering. All the loss and grief for something we’d never have. A love we’d never experience but something we’d see every day in her face as she looked at someone else.
It should be us.
We both fell to the floor, arms wrapped around each other as we let the toxic emotions ooze from our souls.
“We’ll be alright,” Rafe mumbled, his voice shaky.
“We’ll have to be,” I replied but I wasn’t confident in my answer. I felt hollow. Empty. And I knew the only person who could fix that, would be Roux but that was never going to happen. Rafe and I were just going to have to get used the the emptiness. Which fucking sucked.
Chapter Eighteen
Roux
IleftAtticusworkingin Thane’s office. I wanted to find the twins, but I could sense their sadness through our bond. They’d find me when they were ready. I knew that if I found them now, I’d only make things worse and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I wish they could find someone to ease their pain. I knew Atticus would never replace what I could have with them. The twins and I were connected in a way that went beyond family. We were bonded, linked in a way that meant we would be a part of each other’s lives forever.
My mind turned to Magnus. I knew now that there had been something between the three of them, a connection that none of them could deny. But was it salvageable? I knew there was more to Magnus than he portrayed to the world. I’dseenit, felt it. It was why I still loved him. Something just didn’t sit right about what I’d seen when I’d walked in on him with someone else. And the stories about how he became King? I don’t know. The guy was a mystery wrapped in a conundrum. Impossible to figure out. And he always seemed to be on the cusp of telling me something, of dropping his mask, but he never did. I think it was that, more than his betrayal, that had me walking away. That he wouldn’t trust me enough to share with me whatever it was that he was hiding from the world.
A cloud of smoke erupted into my office, followed by a bang so loud my eardrums nearly burst. Gold glitter exploded everywhere, and I fell into a very ungraceful sneezing fit.
“Bless you, honey.”
Once the glitter and smoke dissipated, I caught site of a man perched on the edge of my desk. He was wearing impossibly tight white skinny jeans with artfully placed rips in them the length of his long legs. He’d crossed one in front of the other and he sat there with his pretty head cocked to one side like a German Shepherd.
Fuck, there was glitter everywhere.
