Page 74 of The Butcher

I don’t, though.

I stand stock still, staring at the path those men took, my breathing growing heavier by the second while my palms begin to sweat.

The tension in the room is palpable, it’s so thick I feel like I could reach out and touch it, and even though I can feel Bramley’s eyes on me, burning a hole into the back of my head, I’m not afraid.

Should I be?

Maybe, but if he was going to hurt me, if Bram was going to do more than throw me out or yell at me, Nash and Clay wouldn’t have left me here with him.

Not to mention, he doesn’t scare me.

His size, his demeanor, his overall charming personality. None of that is scary. Not even the dangerous energy I get from all three of them. It’s strongest from Bramley, most intense from him, but I’m not afraid. If anything, I get a little bit of a thrill, the mysterious danger that surrounds my rescuers, something that has me more enthralled than shaking in my boots.

And that’s what frightens me.

A loud thud has me jumping, quickly turning around to see Bram shove a busted table out of his way before he lumbers over to a giant hole in the wall.

Wow, this place really is a mess.

In an oddly specific sort of way.

All of the large pieces of machinery, different things I’m guessing one needs to run a butcher shop, are in pristine order on giant shelves. None of the knives are out of place. The big bowls and barrel-looking things are perfectly fine. It seems to be the furniture and the walls that took the brunt of his tantrum.

Which is rather impressive since these tables are not made of wood, and the wall to my right is brick. He must have used the tables to make the dents in the cement. Either that, or his fists are made of steel.

Maybe he used his thick skull.

At least, Nash says it’s thick, and from what I’ve seen, Bram is bullheaded. So it seems like that would do the most damage.

Biting my lip to hide my smile, I look around the room and try to figure out where to begin.

Most of the floor, where I’m standing, is free of anything big that would need to be moved, but it’s covered in white dust and gray chunks, so I guess that’s my starting point.

I grab the broom Clayton dropped then get to work.

They made us clean out the empty stalls at the ranch.

After an omega left for one reason or another, those of us in the neighboring stalls had to go in, sweep the floors, and throw away anything left behind.

I had to clean out my mother’s things when she died. I had to go into that stall, scrub her blood off the floor, and sweep up clumps of her hair and broken teeth. They made me bag up all of her things, what little she had, and take them to the incinerator. I had to do that, put the last pieces of my mother into the fire and watch until there was nothing left.

Just like the way they dispose of defective omegas, that entire process was over the top, and it was a warning that I didn’t need but was given all the same.

“What are you doing?”

I jump at the deep, gravely voice, at the words barked at me from across the room, and look up with wide eyes. “W-what?”

“What. Are. You doing?” Bram slows the question down, those brilliant blue eyes narrowed on my face. He’s abandoned whatever he was doing with the table in favor of staring at me—again—in the most analytical way anyone has ever looked at me.

“Sweeping?” I straighten up on the last stroke of the bristles in my immediate area, my first pile already rather large. I look down at it and then glance around the room. “I don’t see a dustpan, though.”

My eyes connect with his again, and for a split second, I swear I see a flicker of something pass over them, something I can’t put a name to. It feels familiar, though, and the way it makes my stomach flutter is strange. Strange because it still feels like this man is mine.

That’s what I wanted to see, why I was mostly okay with coming here. I needed to see Bramley again because I needed to know if what happened the other night was because he was strapped down to that bed and I had some sort of reaction to that, or if it was more.

Can confirm.

It was more.

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