Page 26 of The Butcher

They walked in like they owned the place, took what they wanted, and once again, they killed a lot of fucking people to do it.

Twice those bastards upended our town.

Twice they destroyed everything it had been built on and worked hard to become.

Twice was more than enough for me to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

For fifteen fucking years, my brothers, my partners, and I have put our sick skills, our twisted talents, and our darkest depravities to work. We have tirelessly researched, hunted, and ended anyone we could find that was part of what happenedhere, and it became a mission to expand into shutting down that fucking place for good.

Killing has always been a part of my life, something we’ve done forever, but now? Now it’s something I crave and when this vigilante shit finally comes to an end, I wonder if I’ll be able to stop.

It was a fluke in terms of timing; the urges I’d always fought were getting harder and harder to handle, especially when I fell for two men with the same kind of urges at varying levels of hidden, but having a target, an end goal to focus my energy on, it worked out for the best.

But now I see it starting to spill into other aspects of my life, bleeding beyond the pages of vengeance and into the uncharted territory of necessity.

It’s made the never-ending supply of dirty fucks from the ranch both a blessing and a curse.

I don’t have to worry about my proclivities beyond what I’m doing, but I haven’t finished what I set out to do all those years ago, and that feels like I’m disappointing my mother, as well as the rest of the omegas we lost.

And that feeling has only fueled that anger, it’s nurtured that rage, and I’ve been stuck in some fucked up catch twenty-two that has seemingly spiraled into plotting the murder of motorists passing by the turn for Obsidian Falls.

“You are so fucking wound,” Zeke says with a laugh as he pulls me from my thoughts. “You didn’t hear one goddamn thing I just said to you, and I’m not even going to bother trying again solely based on how white your knuckles are right now.”

I look down at my hands, holding the steering wheel so tight my fingers momentarily lock up, then loosen them before they break. “What?”

He shakes his head with a smirk. “The long and short of it is, we lost the truck, and we really need to dump these bodiesbefore it gets too much later. Your boys would jump my shit if they knew what I had you out all hours of the night doing.”

He’s not wrong about that.

After Clayton’s little explosion a few weeks ago, I’ve made a better effort to be less controlling and allow them both to be present in all aspects of what I do the way that I used to.

We went hunting together for the first time in a long time, got a few of Harden’s newer scouts, and we were able to spend some long overdue time alone together while we did it. I didn’t tell either of them he was right but Clay was, and I’ve tried harder to include both Nash and Clayton in more than just my shop or whatever because of it. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I missed having them with me, and it was a breath of fresh fucking air honestly because we work so much better as a team.

Zeke and Titus, we work fine together, but the three of us killing people when we have such different methods turns everything into a shitshow rather quickly, someone ends up fighting with someone else, and I need an immediate and semi-long break from my brothers after the fact.

Tonight was different.

They wouldn’t see it that way, I know without having to ask, but it was different for a few reasons and I didn’t want to bring them into it.

Zeke actually asked me not to.

I didn’t like it, not really, but I understood it.

When he told me that Walker—Bryce Harden’s son, and my brother’s best friend—was involved, that he had a direct lead that put him at serious risk, I wasn’t going to argue with Zeke.

So, I wound up sneaking out of my own goddamn house at midnight, after my partners were dead asleep courtesy of the tequila shots we were doing for some made up reason Clayton had, then walked two miles down the fucking mountain to meet my brother so we didn’t wake them up. All so I could follow alead from his friend who’s a double agent because Zeke didn’t want anyone else brought into it if shit went south.

I can appreciate that, but I don’t like lying to Clay and Nash, and when they undoubtedly find out what happened tonight, I’m not going to.

Which means both Zeke and I will end up in the doghouse, and Walker will make their shit list, too, just for being the informant.

It was a good hunt, though.

Not great, and not quite what Walker expected, but we bagged two fucks on Harden’s payroll, and one of them happened to be the guy in charge of the inventory so now we have a list of all the omegas on the property.

A solid hunt that is almost worth the ass chewing I’m going to get when I get home.

“Those tracks are fresh,” my brother says quietly as I pull behind the blind along the dump site. “Real fresh.”

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