The Hunt

29. Everly

29

Everly

Rhett’s hands lay heavy on the blanket between us, his fingers twitching slightly like he was unsure whether to grab mine again or keep them to himself. His face, usually carved with sharp lines of confidence and strength, looked different in the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains. Softer, almost haunted. I hated the way his jaw tightened every few seconds, like he was bracing himself against something painful.

“Rhett…” I reached out and rested my hand lightly on his arm. His muscles were rigid, his body taut like a bowstring pulled too tight. “I’m here, okay? Just take your time.”

“Okay.” He exhaled sharply, the sound almost like a laugh, though there was no humor in it. “It’s such a long story. It’s hard to know where to start.”

I stayed quiet, waiting. Worry clawed at my chest. Whatever he was about to say, I could tell it wasn’t something he let himself think about often. And yet here he was, getting ready to share it. For me.

His eyes finally lifted to meet mine, dark and solemn. “When I was three, my parents hired a nanny to take care of me. Jessica. She was pretty much exactly how you’d picture a nanny. Bubbly, friendly, loved kids. She took great care of me. She was practically my best friend when I was a kid.”

He paused, and I frowned. “Something happened to her?”

“No. To me. When I was seven, things changed. She was—” He stopped abruptly, shaking his head. “She was sick in the head. But no one knew it. Everyone thought she was such a perfect person, and for a long time, I did too. I loved her.”

When he paused again, I didn’t try to fill the silence. I just sat there, waiting patiently.

“I think that’s why it was so hard for me to accept what was happening,” he went on. “Because I loved her. I saw her as an older sister, or something like that.”

He glanced at me, as if searching for reassurance, and I nodded to let him know I understood.

“My little sister was four when it all started, and she had a few medical issues when she was a kid, so my parents were always busy and stressed dealing with that. Less likely to notice what was going on. Plus, they trusted Jessica implicitly by that stage, because she’d always done such a good job with me. She took advantage of that to start…” He trailed off again, swallowing audibly. “I guess they call it the grooming process.”

My heart lurched. “She abused you?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He nodded. “It started pretty subtly. Little touches here and there. Tickling that lasted a bit too long and strayed to weird places while we played. But I was a kid, you know? It didn’t seem that weird to me at the time. Plus, I trusted her and looked up to her. I thought she knew what she was doing and couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything.”

“Because you didn’t know any better,” I said. “Like you said, she was grooming you. Trying to make you think it was all normal.”

“Exactly.” His brows drew down. Then he spoke up again, looking across the room with a slightly glazed expression, as if he were looking into the past. “When I was about eight or nine, it started to escalate. She'd touch me more. Make me do things to her too. She told me she was helping me. Preparing me for all the girls I'd be with in the future. I still had no idea it was wrong. I felt scared, because it was stuff I’d never seen or heard about, but I was excited at the same time, because she kept telling me it was good, and that it was how I’d become a man one day.”

My stomach twisted, and I squeezed his hand, unable to speak over the lump forming in my throat.

“She’d sneak into my room at night, and… well, I don’t need to spell out every detail for you,” he said gruffly. “She’d always tell me it was our special secret, so I could never tell anyone. She’d tell me that she’d have to leave if that happened, and then I wouldn’t get to see her again. I still loved her, because I always had, so I was terrified of losing her. I know how fucking weird that sounds now, but—”

“No, Rhett. It’s totally understandable,” I murmured. “You were just a child, and she was manipulating you. Using that pure, innocent love that kids feel against you. It’s emotional and mental abuse on top of the rest.”

He nodded slowly and went on. “One day, we had some sort of presentation at school where a guy came in to talk to us about recognizing bad people, not accepting rides from strangers… stuff like that,” he said. “One thing he told us really stuck with me: if an adult makes you keep a secret, that’s not normal. It made me start to realize that what Jessica was doing was wrong. Then I started to have all sorts of horrible feelings about it. Guilt, shame, anger, hurt.”

I scooted a little closer, waiting in silence again.

“At first, I didn’t hate her for what was happening. Instead, I hated myself .” Rhett scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “I knew it was bad, but I blamed myself for letting it happen. Then I hated myself for liking it sometimes, because there were actually times when I enjoyed what was happening. That’s really fucked up, right?”

“None of that was your fault, Rhett,” I said, shaking my head. Tears were stinging the backs of my eyes. “You were still so young and so confused about what was happening.”

“Yeah, well, back then, I didn’t know what I know now,” he said bitterly. “To cope with all the bad feelings, I sort of just… shut the door on that part of my mind. It all hurt too much to think about. But I guess it had to come out somewhere.”

“The nightmares?”

“Yeah.” Rhett rubbed his jaw again. “Had them every night.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured, squeezing his hand again.

He swallowed thickly. “By the time I was eleven, I’d finally realized it was her fault. Not mine. So I decided to confront her. I psyched myself up for it as much as I could, and I told her I didn’t want to do any of the stuff anymore. She didn’t react well.”

“What happened?”

“She told me we couldn’t stop. She was still ‘training’ me, in her words. She was angry as hell that I even brought it up,” he replied. “She said if I ever brought it up again, something would happen to my dog.”

“Holy shit,” I said under my breath.

“I’d really psyched myself up for this confrontation, so I felt pretty brave. I told her I didn’t believe her. She wouldn’t really hurt an animal. She loved animals. So I told her again—I didn’t want it anymore, and we needed to stop.” Rhett looked down, brows dipping again. “The next morning, she brought me my breakfast with my dog’s collar on the edge of the tray.”

Nausea rose in my throat as horror twisted my stomach. “Oh my god.”

“She didn’t actually kill him. Turned out she just took his collar off to scare me. And it fucking worked, ” he continued. His voice had turned hoarse, like gravel was scraping the edges of his throat. “After I cried for an hour, thinking he was dead, she told me I was lucky this time, but the next time I opened my big mouth, she’d really get rid of the dog, along with my little sister too.”

“You must have been so frightened.”

“I was. By that stage, it was just constant mental abuse on top of the rest. Like, if we went for a swim, she’d look pointedly at my sister, and then she’d make a quiet comment to me about how we needed to be careful, because it’s so easy for little kids to drown. Shit like that.”

The lump in my throat grew thicker. I wanted to pull Rhett into my arms and squeeze him in the tightest bear hug imaginable, but I knew I couldn’t. Not when he was still telling his story.

“When I was thirteen, I finally came up with a good plan to make her stop,” he said. “At least I thought it was good. But I was a kid, so what the fuck did I know?”

“What was the plan?” I asked in a small voice.

“Well, I already knew she didn’t like it when I said I didn’t want to do anything with her anymore. So I thought I’d reframe it. Instead of telling her I didn’t want it, I’d tell her that her work was done, because I had a crush on a girl at school and was finally ready to take everything she’d taught me and apply it. She’d finished preparing me for other girls, just like she said she would all those years ago. I even—” He stopped abruptly, face contorting in a grimace. “I even told her I appreciated all her lessons. Really fawned over the bitch. I figured that way, it would seem like it was all her idea. Something she should be pleased about.”

“And then?” I asked, heart hammering in my chest.

“She didn’t want to lose me. Ever. But she could tell I was done, and I wouldn’t take it anymore.” Rhett fell silent again, for a long moment. Then his dark eyes met mine, and he spoke without flinching or looking away. “She flew into a rage and stabbed me sixteen times. Then she stabbed herself in the neck.”

I gasped, one hand flying to my mouth. “Oh my god.”

“I didn’t die, obviously. Neither did she,” he said bitterly. “I was lucky. My dad came home early that day and found us. If he hadn’t, I probably would’ve bled out. Jessica would’ve, too. So for a very fucking long time afterwards, I didn’t feel lucky. Instead I wished I did die that day, just so she could’ve died too.”

“Rhett…” My voice broke as I whispered his name, and I reached for him instinctively. My hand hovered just above his arm, trembling, before finally settling over his wrist. The weight of his pain radiated through me, and tears blurred my vision, hot and insistent.

He closed his eyes and dragged a hand over his face, as if trying to wipe away the memories. His shoulders stayed hunched, tight with tension, and his hand shook as he dropped it back to the bed.

I didn’t know what to say. I hated that someone had hurt him like this, but I couldn’t think of any words that could properly convey the depths of my sorrow, along with the horror I felt.

“I’m so sorry all of that happened to you,” I finally murmured. “But I’m really glad you’re still here. So, so glad.”

“I’m glad I’m still here too,” he said, squeezing my hand.

“What happened to Jessica in the end?” I asked in a tentative tone, unsure if he was okay with continuing the discussion about her. “Is she in prison?”

Rhett gave a low, bitter laugh. “She went to prison for a while, but not long enough. Three years.”

“That’s all?”

“Her lawyer claimed she had previously undiagnosed mental issues that shaped all the abuse, culminating in the murder-suicide attempt,” he said. His jaw tightened, and he looked away again. “Part of me gets that, you know? I mean, of fucking course there was something wrong with her. No sane person wants to do all that shit to a kid. But at the same time, all I could think was: Fuck her. I didn’t care that she was sick in the head. She put me through fucking hell. ”

“I understand,” I said, keeping my voice soft, as if that could somehow ease the storm raging inside him.

Suddenly, something hit me, like a puzzle piece finally snapping into place. This wasn’t just about what happened to Rhett. It was about what it made him.

It was more than just the physical scars Jessica left behind—it was the way her cruelty had shaped how he saw the world, how he saw people. How he saw himself, too.

“I think you felt like you never got any real justice when it came to her, especially after the way she tortured you for so long,” I said, searching his face. “That’s why you’re so relentless about seeking your own idea of justice, right? You don’t want other bad people to get away with the stuff they do. You don’t want them to walk away unpunished.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” he muttered.

My brows knitted. “Do you have any idea what happened to Jessica after she got out?” I asked. “Did she ever try to track you down?”

“There was a permanent restraining order in place. She couldn’t go anywhere near my family.”

“So she’s just out there, living her life? Free as a bird?” I asked, anger flaring in my chest.

“No, I don’t think so.” Rhett steeled his jaw and sat up straighter. “For a long time, I thought that was exactly what was happening, and I was fucking furious. But just after I finished the final trial for The Wild Hunt, my dad said something to all of the new members. It was a comment about certain people getting what they deserve during the Hunt. He looked right at me when he said it, with a weird expression on his face, so I got the impression he was hinting at something.”

“You think he arranged for Jessica to end up in the Hunt after she got out of prison?”

“Yeah.” He dipped his chin in a curt nod. “That’s exactly what I think.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I did, afterwards. But he said he didn’t know what I was talking about,” Rhett replied. “I guess he can’t admit it, because then he’d also be admitting that the Patriarchs can bring in whoever they want as players, overriding the regular recruitment process. And none of them want to admit to any sort of corruption, because that would open a whole fucking can of worms.”

“Like all the stuff Jake was telling us about,” I murmured.

“Yup.” Rhett sighed and ran a hand across his face again. Then he frowned. “Sorry to change the subject so abruptly, but I just thought of something.”

“What is it?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Talking about my dad just now… it reminded me of your dad. He worked for Peter Jennings, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Still does.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a civil engineer. He has a whole team working under him.”

“So he could know about the shit that goes on here, then,” Rhett said in a low voice. “He could be the one designing, building, or refurbishing all the stuff on the island.”

I sat up straight, heart suddenly thumping again. I’d been under so much stress over the last two days, my mind whirling through so many things, that it hadn’t even occurred to me to consider my father’s potential involvement in the Hunt. But Rhett was right. Dad worked here on Wildercliff Island for a few weeks—sometimes even a few months—every single year. He had to know something.

“You’re right. Maybe he could help us in some way,” I said. “Although… I have no idea how.”

Rhett got up and rifled through his bag, pulling out his cell phone a moment later. “It’s only half past nine, so he’s probably still awake,” he said. “I think you should call him. Tell him you’re here. See what he has to say for himself.”

I stared at the phone. “You get a signal here?”

“Yeah. It’s only jammed on the hunting grounds, just in case one of the players somehow ends up with a phone,” he said. He held his cell out to me. “Here. Call him.”

I swallowed hard. Then I took a deep breath and dialed my father’s number. It rang out the first time, but when I tried again, he finally answered, sounding sleepy. “Hello?”

“Hi, Dad. It’s me,” I said, switching the call to speakerphone so Rhett could listen in.

“Honey!” My father sounded wide awake now. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day!”

I frowned, confused. We didn’t talk on the phone very often—both of us had always preferred texting. “Why?”

“I got a call from a friend of yours this morning. Tessa something-rather. She said she received a strange phone call from you a few nights ago, and she hasn’t seen or heard from you since,” he said. “She tracked me down and called me to ask if I knew where you’d gone. She’s very worried. Relentless, too. I think she’s called me five times now.”

“Oh.” Another hard lump appeared in my throat as I thought about my beautiful, sweet friend. “That definitely sounds like something Tessa would do.”

“So where are you? You haven’t taken off somewhere with a boy, have you?” Dad said, chuckling softly.

I coughed to clear my throat. “I’m on Wildercliff Island.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a long moment. Then my father finally spoke again, all traces of humor removed from his voice. “What did you just say?”

“I’m on Wildercliff Island,” I repeated. “I’m in the Hunt.”

Silence again.

“Everly… is this some sort of sick joke?” Dad finally asked in a low voice.

“No. I’m here.”

“H-how is that possible?” His tone had turned frantic now. “What the hell are you doing there? Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is?”

“Jake signed me up. He was pissed at me about the breakup.”

“That little bastard. I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll—”

“Dad! Listen to me!” I cut in. “I didn’t call you to talk about him. I called to talk about you. And judging by your reaction to what I’ve said so far, you know exactly what the Hunt is, don’t you? You know everything that goes on here.”

“I… yes. I know.”

I steeled my jaw. “I need you to tell me everything. How you ended up working for The Wild Hunt. What you do for them, and why. How much you know.”

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered. His voice had thickened so much that it was clear he was crying. “Fucking Christ. ”

“Pull it together, Dad. My life is at stake.”

“All right.” He inhaled deeply. “They approached me about a year after your mom got sick. They wanted me to act as a consultant on a project they had in mind, with the potential for it to become a regular job. You would’ve been seven or eight at the time. The money they were offering me was good. Astoundingly good. But I said no.”

“Why?”

“It was just… odd. Far too odd for me to ignore. I run an engineering contracting firm in St. Louis. So what on earth did a bunch of rich guys from the East Coast want with me? Why not hire someone closer to them? And why were they offering so much money? There was clearly something wrong with the deal.”

“Right. But you eventually changed your mind. Why?”

“You were so young back then, Everly,” he muttered. “You had no idea what was going on with your mom.”

“I knew she was sick,” I said through gritted teeth. “I always knew.”

“Sorry, honey. That isn’t what I meant. Of course you knew she was sick. I just meant… we tried to keep the financial side of things from you. You were too young to have to worry about money on top of everything else you were going through.”

“You’re talking about Mom’s treatment costs?”

“Yes, and the surgeries, too. The hospital bills were astronomical. I can’t even tell you how much it all came out to, because it’s such a ridiculous figure that it doesn’t sound like it could possibly be true. Our insurance refused to cover most of it, too,” he said. “It was hard, especially with your mom no longer able to work, but I tried my best. I made some major changes. I sold one of the cars, took you out of your private school, and subdivided our land to create two extra blocks, which I sold to a developer. That covered us for a while.”

“But it wasn’t enough in the end?”

“No. The medical debt… we were up to our eyeballs in it. So I subdivided more of the land. Re-mortgaged the house. Sold everything I could. It still wasn’t enough.” Dad let out a heavy sigh and went on. “The Wild Hunt approached me again, asking if I’d changed my mind. That’s when I realized why they came to me in the first place. They were looking for people exactly like me. Desperate people who couldn’t afford to say no.”

“That sounds about right,” I muttered. I cleared my throat and went on. “What did they want you to do?”

“Their last engineering project manager had passed away, so they needed to replace him. They had a lot of projects in mind for something they referred to as a hunting game. Firstly, they needed refurbishments for the tunnel system on the island, because it was very old, and parts of it were rotting away or caving in, which made it quite dangerous to traverse. There were also plans for underground structures and cabins. Some were new, and others were old but needed fixing up. And then… there were also plans for elaborate traps.”

“So you knew they were killing people,” I said in a low voice. “It wasn’t really a game.”

“They didn’t tell me the truth about it. They had to tell me something , though, given the nature of some of the design projects. So they settled on a half-truth, I suppose,” he said gruffly. “I was told that this so-called game involved death-row prisoners who’d done terrible things in their lives. Absolute monsters who were set to be executed soon. Peter Jennings told me that a lot of rich people were willing to pay a hell of a lot of money to watch these people being hunted to death. The last prisoner standing would be awarded money and freedom.”

“And that all sounded okay to you?”

“Of course not! It sounded horrendous. But I was desperate. So I tried to rationalize it in my head. Those people were going to die anyway. And they were horrible, evil people, so it wasn’t the same as an innocent person dying,” he said. “I needed the money, or else your Mom’s treatment would have to stop, and then…”

His voice broke, and he stopped talking for a moment.

“Dad,” I said. “Keep going. When did you find out the truth about the Hunt?”

“After I’d worked for them for a few years,” he said. “Like I said, I knew they were running an annual death game on that island, but I compartmentalized it. My work for them took up a few weeks or months every year, depending on the scale of the projects, and then I could go home and pretend it wasn’t happening. But then… I finally realized what was really happening.”

“How did you find out?”

“Well, when I was there, I always worked in an office they gave me in the guest section of the manor. I—”

“The west wing?” I cut in.

“Yes, that’s right. The same place you stayed in when I took you there one summer,” Dad said. “One day, Peter told me we’d be working in the northern wing instead, in his personal office. I think he trusted me by that stage, seeing as we’d been working together for years.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That same day, he received a phone call. He was expecting it, and I suppose it must’ve been important, because he told me it would probably take a while,” he said. “It was a nice day, so he told me he’d take it outside, and I could stay in the office by myself and keep working on the designs until he returned. I did at first, but being left alone in his office… I eventually got curious.”

“You snooped?”

“Yes. I knew I wouldn’t be caught, because I could see him through the window, pacing the estate grounds while he talked on the phone. So I tried a few drawers and filing cabinets and eventually found one unlocked. It was filled with player profiles.” Dad fell silent again for a brief moment. Then he coughed and went on, voice thick with emotion again. “The top folder contained information about a young female player from the previous year. I found it hard to believe that a twenty-three-year-old middle school teacher could’ve been on death row, so I Googled her to see what she’d supposedly done. Instead of articles about her terrible crimes, or whatever else I expected to see, I found a Facebook page set up by her family and friends. She’d been missing for a year. They were all heartbroken.”

“So she wasn’t a death-row prisoner.”

“No. By all accounts, she was a much-loved and valued member of society,” he replied. “That was when I realized I’d been tricked. The Hunt involved anyone and everyone who signed up for it, for whatever twisted reasons, including innocent people. Or perhaps they were even kidnapped and forced to participate. I had no idea, and I couldn’t exactly ask Peter or any of the other guys.”

“How long had you worked for them at that stage?”

“Four years.”

Something twisted inside me. “But you’ve worked for them for twelve years, Dad. That means you kept going for eight more years, even after you knew they were killing innocent people,” I said, voice dripping with fury. “How could you?”

“I had no choice.”

“Yes, you did! You could’ve quit!”

“And then what? Let your mother die when I couldn’t pay for her treatments anymore?” he shouted down the line. “Is that what you think I should’ve done?”

“In case you didn’t notice, she did die!” I snapped. “Three years ago!”

“She was supposed to die all the way back in 2012! That was the date the doctors initially gave us,” Dad snapped back at me. “That’s what you’re not getting here, Everly. The Wild Hunt bought us an extra nine years with her! Do you have any idea what that means?”

“I…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“She was able to see you grow up into a beautiful young woman,” Dad went on, voice husky with emotion. “You were able to make so many more memories with her. So was I. If it wasn’t for all that money coming in, you would’ve lost her when you were only eight years old. Can you even imagine how different your life would’ve been then? What it would’ve been like for us without her there for us all those years?”

“No,” I murmured, sagging against the bedhead. “But she’s gone now, Dad. So why the hell are you still working for Peter?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Because I still haven’t finished paying off some of the medical debts,” he said. “Like I said before, they were astronomical. That’s why I couldn’t help you with college, as much as I wanted to.”

“When will you stop?”

“I… I don’t know. A few more years, maybe.” He began to sob, his breath hitching through the phone, each sound jagged and raw. “Oh, honey, I don’t understand why you’re there. You can’t be there. You can’t. ”

“Well, I am,” I said in a low voice.

“I’m going to call Peter. Tell him it’s a mistake. He’ll let you out of the—”

“No!” I cut him off, sitting up straight again. “You can’t do that!”

“I have to,” he insisted. “You think I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and let my baby girl die out there?”

“Dad, if you make that call, you won’t be saving me. You’ll be guaranteeing my death instead,” I said. “Because they’ll realize I got access to a phone, and then they’ll focus all their efforts on tracking me down and killing me.”

“But I can’t sit here and do nothing . I have to get you out of there!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I have a way to survive. I have help.”

“From who?”

I glanced at Rhett. “From a hunter.”

“Everly, no, ” Dad said sharply. “That’s a trap. The hunters do this sometimes. They like to toy with their targets before they kill them. I know because I’ve designed some of their traps. So whoever that man is… he isn’t there to help you.”

“He is. I’m sure of it.” I swallowed hard and went on. “You know about the prize, right? For the last player standing?”

“$5 million, I believe,” he said quietly.

“That’s right. I’m going to be the last one standing. I’m going to win that prize, and then I’ll come home and pay off those debts for you. But you have to help me. And helping me means keeping your mouth shut for now. Okay?”

“But—”

“ Dad. You can’t say a single word to anyone,” I said, voice rising. “Promise you’ll stay quiet. Promise you’ll do that to help me survive. Or else you’ll be burying an empty coffin for me right next to Mom.”

I knew that last comment was a low blow, but it was the truth, and he needed to see that.

“All right,” he finally said. I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was crying again. “I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you,” I said stiffly.

“I’m so sorry, honey. If I hadn’t gone to work for that man, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now. It’s all my fault.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Dad, I’m really sorry, but I can’t do this blame-game thing with you now. I need to focus on surviving.”

“I understand,” he muttered.

“Is there anything you can tell me that could help me?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if this will help,” he finally said. “But travel from the island is locked down while the Hunt is on. Did you know about that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, several years ago, I heard about an incident involving one of the elderly society members. He was watching the Hunt from one of the rooms in the manor, and he had a massive heart attack. After one of the maids found him, the lockdown was temporarily lifted, and he was taken to the nearest hospital. So, my point is… it’s possible to end the lockdown, if you can figure out a way.”

I looked over at Rhett. His lips were twisting in contemplation, and his brows were drawn into a deep frown.

“Is there anything else that could help?” I asked. “Maybe a secret bunker somewhere that hardly anyone knows about? Or some sort of code? Like for Peter’s office, perhaps?”

“No.” Dad’s voice cracked again. “I’m sorry, honey. I really don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I should go. If Tessa calls again, please tell her everything is going to be fine.”

On the other end of the line, I could hear Dad drawing in a deep, shaky breath of his own. “Stay safe out there, Everly. Please .”

“I will. I promise I’ll come home soon,” I said.

With that, I ended the call. If I didn’t, I knew I’d start sobbing my heart out.

Rhett’s hand touched my back, warm and steady. “I’m really sorry about your mom,” he murmured. “I knew she was sick when we were kids, but I didn’t know the rest.”

My heart sped up, and I was suddenly afraid I’d choke on my next words. I didn’t want Rhett to see me crumble. Especially when this whole conversation had started in the first place because I wanted to support him through his childhood trauma. Not the other way around.

His hand stayed where it was, and I could feel the heat of it seeping into my skin. "Everly," he said, voice low and soft, like he was afraid of shattering something fragile. "It’s okay to talk about this. I’m not going anywhere."

“I just… I don’t want to make this all about me,” I finally said. “Not after everything you’ve told me tonight.”

“But this is about you,” Rhett replied, gently stroking my back. “You’re not being selfish.”

“I feel like I am,” I mumbled.

“No.” He shook his head. “Earlier, you said we’re in this together, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You were right. We’re in this together. That means we can share things. It doesn’t matter where or when,” he said. “My trauma doesn’t override yours, or whatever you’re thinking right now. We can talk about it. I want to be here for you.”

I felt the first tear slip down my cheek as I finally turned to face Rhett again, meeting his gaze. The sight of him—so calm, so there, despite everything—made it all hit harder. The grief, the anger, the weight of everything I’d been holding back. My breath hitched in my chest, and before I could stop it, the words spilled out.

“When I was seven, my mom went in for a pregnancy scan, and that was when she found out she was sick,” I said. I briefly paused to wipe my cheek and take a deep, shaky breath. “Ovarian cancer. It was already at a pretty late stage, so they told us she probably only had a year to live. She lost the baby she was carrying, too.”

Rhett wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against his chest. “That’s rough. Really rough,” he murmured.

“Yeah. It was.” My voice cracked again as I spoke, and I melted into him, finally letting myself break down. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. But he was right—I needed to.

“It was horrible. So fucking horrible,” I finally went on. “But then… it’s like my dad said. The Wild Hunt bought us extra time. I was so grateful for his new job, because it meant we had all those years with her that we thought we’d never get. I had no idea it came at the expense of so many other people’s lives.”

“That’s not your fault,” he murmured, stroking my hair.

I pulled away a bit, looking up at him. “Do you blame my father for what he did?” I asked in a hollow voice. “Do you think he’s a monster too?”

He slowly shook his head. “Not really. Peter preyed on him just like he preys on everyone else. He took advantage of the situation and basically held the cost of your dying mother’s treatment over his head. That’s beyond fucked up.”

“That’s true,” I murmured.

“Peter and the other Patriarchs are the real problem here. They’re the puppet masters pulling all the strings.” His jaw clenched, and he went on. “They’re the monsters we need to take down.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I know how that feels.” Rhett began to stroke my hair again, his touch slow and soothing. “But right now, you really need to rest. So do I. In the morning, we’ll be able to think better. More clearly.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him I wanted to come up with a plan right now, but I knew he was right. My body felt heavy, every muscle weighed down with exhaustion, and my brain felt like it was running on fumes.

Rhett shifted closer, pulling me into his arms completely. My head rested against his chest, and I could hear the steady thud of his heartbeat. My eyelids grew heavier with each breath I took, the tension slowly unraveling from my body.

“I’ve got you, baby,” he murmured, his lips brushing against my temple. “You’re safe here.”

I believed him. For the first time in what felt like forever, I genuinely felt safe… and it was in the arms of a killer.